The constraint which had partially lifted during the conversation at luncheon fell again with the departure of the ladies. I had mystified them more than ever; and mystery does not make for easy give and take in hospitality. To Averill himself his hospitality was sacred. To entertain at his own board a man with no credentials but those which an adventurer might present was the source of a discomfort that amounted to unhappiness. He couldn’t conceal it; he didn’t care to conceal it. While fulfilling all that courtesy required of a host, he was willing to let me see it. I saw it, and could say nothing, since he might easily be right; and an adventurer I might be. As, with his back to the open doorway into the hall, he sat down with his own cigar, I felt that he was saying to himself, "I wish to God you were not in this house!" I myself was responding silently by wishing the same thing. It was the obvious minute at which to tell him everything. I saw that as plainly as you do. Had I made a clean breast of it I should have become one of the most interesting cases of his experience. Such instances of shell-shock were just beginning to be talked about. The term was finding its way into the newspapers and garnishing common speech. Though I knew of no connection between my misfortunes and the Great War, I could have made shift to furnish an illustration of this new phase among its tragedies. During a pause in our stilted speech I screwed myself up to the point. "There’s something—" But his attention was distracted for the moment, and when it came back to me I couldn’t begin again. No! I could fight the thing through on my own; but that would be my utmost. A confession of breakdown was impossible. Then, all at once, I got a glimpse of what was in the back of his mind, though something else happened simultaneously, of which I must tell you first. Into the open space between the portieres behind him there glided a little figure clad in amber-colored linen, the monochrome with the sun-spots beneath it. She didn’t speak, for the reason that Averill spoke first. "You’re—" He struck a match nervously to relight his cigar—"you’re a—a married man?" Once more negation had to be my refuge. If I admitted that I was he might ask me whom I had married, and when, and where. I spoke with an emphasis that sprang not from eagerness of denial, but from anxiety that the topic shouldn’t be discussed. "No." The question and answer followed so swiftly on Mildred Averill’s arrival on the threshold that she caught them both. Little sparks of gold shone in the brown pools of her eyes, and her smile took on a new shade of vitality. "Boyd, Lulu wants you to bring your cigars up-stairs. The coffee is there, and she’d like to talk to Mr. Soames about the old Chinese things before she begins to sing."