"Even if this is my own wine," he commented, "I can't withhold commendation. I sometimes think that only the very abstemious man can truly appreciate a good vintage. For him it is an undulled pleasure of the palate." Stuart Farquaharson at last found it possible to laugh. "I for one can't dispute the statement," he confessed. "I haven't tasted it yet--though I understood that both Conscience and I were invited." "A thousand pardons!" exclaimed the host, shamefacedly. "I am a poor sort of Ganymede--drinking alone and leaving my guests unserved!" He set down his own glass, and with tardy solicitude proffered to them the remaining two. "Here's to the homecoming," he proposed with a jauntiness which sat upon him like foreign raiment as he took up his own wine again and Stuart, with a dolorous smile, suggested: "Why not include me in the toast, Eben? The arrival--and the departure." "Ah," demurred the elder man easily. "But that's not to be celebrated, my boy. For us that is a misfortune." The two men emptied and put down their glasses--and lighted cigars while Conscience sat thoughtfully, making slower work of her Madeira. "And now shall we have a little music?" inquired the husband, while the younger man's face darkened, and Conscience said rather hastily: "Not this evening, please, Eben. We've rather overworked the phonograph of late." "Not even 'The Beautiful Night of Love'?" The inquiry held an insistent shade of regret. But Eben, as his glance went shiftily to the face of the clock, was as steady and as cool as one may become under the temporary keying of a repressed and brain-wrecking excitement. To this inflexible composure he must hold until a certain moment arrived, and he must time himself to its coming with a perfection of nicety. "At last, Eben," Farquaharson testified when a brief silence had fallen on the trio, "I am ready to praise your wine. I feel the glow in my veins and the glow is insidiously grateful." "I was just thinking so, too," agreed Conscience. "It takes only a taste to go to my head." She was still holding between her fingers the stem of a glass half-full. "I was very tired and already I feel wonderfully restored." Indeed the shadow had left her eyes and in them was a quiet glow as she smiled upon her husband whose nerves were as tautly strung as those of a sprinter crouched upon his mark and straining to be away at the pistol's crack. "The traitoress has the infamy to smile at me--whom she has betrayed," was the thought in his heart. "It will soon be time!"