"Food!" cried Cynthia in contempt. Then she changed her tone. "Well, I haven't had any breakfast. Perhaps--yes." She was a girl with a healthy appetite and very unhappily she ate a big breakfast. "Now light a cigarette and tell me about it." He pushed over a silver box lined with cedar wood from which Cynthia took a cigarette. She tapped the end upon the table and lighted it. Mr. Benoliel's cigarettes were famous for their freshness and the delicacy of their aroma. Cynthia inhaled the tobacco and was a little comforted. "No," she said. "I can't tell you all about it. I just want to ask you a question." "Yes?" "You remember the warning you gave me at Culver when you didn't know that I was married?" "Quite well," said Mr. Benoliel regretfully. "It came too late." "I am glad that it came too late," Cynthia observed quietly. "For I might have taken it." Mr. Benoliel looked perplexed. "Yet you are unhappy, Cynthia?" "Very. None the less I wouldn't go back. But I don't want you to ask me questions. I will tell you at once that you were right--quite right up to a point. And the happiness both of Harry and myself depends upon your being right all through." Mr. Benoliel's eyes flashed into life. "There is a chance then?" "Oh yes! If you are right." "Let me hear!" Cynthia put her question. "What did you exactly mean when you said that even if the change you feared should come and some latent ambition should spring to life and snatch him back, separation need not follow, provided that on both sides there was love?" A gravity overspread Benoliel's face. "I meant, my dear, that sooner or later," he said gently, "after much tribulation, much revolt, one of the two will make the necessary sacrifice, and will make it whole-heartedly." Cynthia was silent for a little while. "Yes," she said at last in a low voice. "Of late I have begun to think that that is what you meant." She dropped her cigarette upon a plate and rose. "Thank you, Mr. Benoliel," she said, and she walked with a trailing step to the door. At the door she paused. "And is it always the woman who must make the sacrifice?" she asked; and Mr. Benoliel lost in a moment all that second-hand aspect of the dilettante which habitually cloaked him. "Always," he said, with a ringing gravity of voice. "That is the law of the world, and neither man nor woman shall change it." Cynthia opened the door and went out. CHAPTER XXXV THE LITTLE BIT EXTRA