Shut up in her own rooms, the rooms where she had planned so many hours of happiness when son and daughter should be home, Marjorie Benton tried to shut her ears to the bustle of preparations for departure. But each thump of a trunk as she heard it carried from her daughter’s room made an added bruise on her lacerated heart—gave her a sense of loss that even all of Howard’s loving protection (he was the only one who came to break her solitude) could not entirely heal. Her baby was going away from her! It was her baby who had chosen to do this thing! On the day that the girl’s father came for her to take her to her new hotel home, she met him outside the door. She flew into his arms with eagerness. But, with one foot on the running board of his car, her eyes turned backward for a moment. She looked up at Hugh for guidance. “Do you think—do you think, Daddy,” she faltered, confused, “that I ought to say good-by?” Hugh Benton’s thoughts were not on the daughter he was taking from home and mother. He had no time to discuss matters, nor to wait while Elinor made up her mind. He was to meet Geraldine DeLacy at their favorite little café for lunch in an hour (their regular daily meeting) and he was eager not to be late. He shrugged indifferently, as he held open the door of the limousine. “Suit yourself, my dear,” he said, “but I can’t see——” “Nor I!” Elinor leaped lightly into the machine. “What’s the use of good-bys? I’ve had enough of scenes—forever.” And she turned her face resolutely toward the new life. Geraldine DeLacy was kept waiting for a short time, but when she saw Hugh Benton’s tall familiar figure coming toward her, her mood of pettishness passed as though a hand had wiped out the lines from her face, and it was a smiling eager countenance with which she greeted him as he bent over her hand a moment before taking the chair opposite her in their favorite little corner in the downtown café. Geraldine DeLacy was a careful player. She knew there was yet much to lose by a false move, and she prided herself that never yet had anyone called to her, “Checkmate!” There was the Benton money, for instance. Something must be devised—It would never do to have Marjorie Benton come out victor there, and she knew quite well through her familiarity with the divorce proceedings that were already under way in less than two weeks after Hugh had gained Marjorie’s permission to start them, that Hugh intended to live up to the letter of his promise to his wife, given that night he had forced her hand. So it was with no suggestion either of her discontent in this matter, nor of the bad temper that had spent itself over having been kept waiting that the young widow spoke softly to the man who apologized. “Of course, it was long waiting, Hugh, dear,” she pouted prettily. “But it’s always an age if I have to wait for you a moment! And to think before I knew you I never thought I could miss anyone in the world!”