"Only at the degree of your success, Eben," she told him gravely; "I had not supposed it so large." But as time went on, an intelligence less keenly edged than hers would have recognized that it was only to the anterooms of his financial interests that he admitted her. This was inevitable, and obviously he could not explain what she felt to be a rebuff. To make full disclosure of certain transactions would have stripped Eben Tollman of disguise and brought results as parlous as those he had feared on the afternoon when he left his strong box unlocked. Structures of self-delusion might have fallen into shapeless debris under the batteries of her frank questioning. Eben Tollman could dismiss from thought the woman who has lost her way or the man who has succumbed to a destructive thirst. That required only the remembrance that the "wages of sin is death." But if real estate which he owned in poor, even disreputable sections of distant cities brought him in surprisingly large rentals, he did not conceive that his duty required an investigation of the characters of his tenants. Of course should his agents tell him that his property was being prostituted to evil ends for gain he would have to sever relations with them, but he selected agents who troubled him with no such embarrassing details. This was a practical attitude, but something told him that in it Conscience would hardly see eye to eye with him. It was late in May that Jimmy Hancock wrote a note to the girl with whom he had ridden horseback in the Valley of Virginia. "I've just had a stroke of luck," he said, "in meeting our old friend Stuart Farquaharson, who is touring the world, crowned gorgeously with bays of literary fame. I ran into him yesterday in Yokohama and from him learned for the first time of your marriage. If I am the last to congratulate you, at least I am among the first in heartiness and sincerity.... "There are some charming Americans here--though I don't think of any others whom I should mention as common acquaintances. Or did you know Mrs. Larry Holbury? She has been reigning graciously over us, and I am among the smitten. However, since both she and Stuart are to sail on the _Nippon Maru_ I have no great modicum of hope." Poor Jimmy! Never was man less bent on purveying morsels of deleterious gossip. Never was man, in effect, more stupidly blundering. He wrote the day after the dance on his cruiser and he spoke of the things near his current thoughts. When Conscience had read the note, her eyes wandered thoughtfully and at the end her lips curled. "So she followed him across the world, did she?" she said half aloud, since she was quite alone. Then she added quietly: "Still I guess she didn't pursue him without knowing that she would be welcome. It was just as well that the dream ended in time."