"Because it lies in your power to put an end to the Compact and bring about the catastrophe the Unknown threatened." "I think you credit me with rather too much. I do not quite see how I can accomplish all this?" "But I do," Miss Templeton said, briskly. "I believe I am right in saying Mr. Kelson is in love with you--that you can make him do pretty well anything you please. Well, all you have to do is to lead him on to propose and insist on his marrying you at once--or at all events before the expiration of the Compact. If you succeed in doing this the Compact will be broken!" "That may be," Lilian Rosenberg exclaimed, "but where, pray, should I come in? Why on earth should I marry a man I don't care a snap for?" "Why!" Miss Templeton replied, slowly, "why, because by marrying a man you don't care a snap for, you would save the life of a man--I am quite sure, you care a very great deal for." CHAPTER XXIX THE END AND "THE BEYOND" It took Lilian Rosenberg some time to make up her mind. "It's extraordinary," she said to herself, "how fond I am of Shiel. I used to think it an impossibility for me to be really fond of anyone.... The question is, however, am I sufficiently in love with him, to give him up to that soft little cat--Gladys Martin! If it weren't for this illness--if I could only persuade myself that he isn't as ill as Miss Whatever-her-name-is--said, I shouldn't think twice--I should let things be--but as I feel sure he is really ill--dangerously ill--and the only chance of his recovery lies in the possibility of his marrying Martin--I must deliberate. Shall I or shall I not? If it were any other woman I shouldn't so much mind--but--Gladys Martin! I can't endure her. There is one hope, however, namely--that if he marries her, he will soon tire of her--and--and come to me. What a tremendous score off her that would be! But, no! I wouldn't do that! Because--because--well there--just like my infernal luck--I love him. Could I marry him, I wonder, even if there were no Gladys Martin? It is doubtful! Yet I believe I could. But what is the good of conceiving impossibilities! There is a Gladys Martin--and--I can never have Shiel. The only question I have to settle is--Shall she have him? Shall I marry Kelson so that Martin can marry Shiel?" Lilian Rosenberg turned this question over in her mind for a whole day and night, sometimes arriving at one decision, sometimes at another. In the end--very elaborately dressed, and looking daintier than she had ever done in her life, she waylaid Kelson and asked him to have tea with her. Any pretty face, accentuated by all the allurements of a large mushroom hat and hobble skirt, was enough for Kelson; but when that face belonged to the one girl for whom, above all other girls, he had a colossal weakness, he simply could not feast his eyes enough on it.