WILLIAM CARTER took his wife to the inn for supper. He had appeared at the door of the Sunday-school hall with a taxi and abruptly bundled Fanchon into it. It was just after her performance on the stage and before the audience began to disperse. In fact, they heard the strains of some very churchy music coming from the orchestra, as if an effort was being made--delayed but strenuous--to soothe the startled spectators of Fanchon’s amazing dance. William said nothing. He sat in the dark interior of the taxi with a face as white as paper, and Fanchon, watching him covertly, saw that the hand he laid on the window shook. She leaned back in her corner, twisting a strand of pearls around her throat--a strand that she had put on after the dance--and watching him; but she said nothing. She had danced so wildly, indeed, that she was still panting and throbbing with excitement. She seemed to feel the thrill of the music even in her feet. It was intoxicating, it was what she loved--the glamour of the lights, the music, the motion. Her whole body vibrated, she could scarcely sit still, her feet still moved restlessly. She loved it! Yet she felt that heavy silence of her husband, the stiffness of his body as he sat there, and she had caught a glimpse of his ghastly face. She bit her lips, staring out into the night, her bosom heaving passionately. She felt like a beautiful wild bird in a trap. She stared, too, at the quiet street, with inveterate dislike of its quietness. She saw the group of loungers in front of the chemist’s, the belated pedestrians at the crossing. There was a glimpse of shadowing trees. Pendent branches swept and swayed before feebly lighted show-windows, where the shades were partly drawn down, and the infrequent street-lamps shot occasional lances of light across their dingy way. One such shaft struck on William’s profile and revealed his tightened lips. Fanchon wondered. She had not been aware of Mr. Carter’s catapultic exit, and she did not know how much her husband knew. Some one must have telephoned him--whom, she could not conjecture. She shrank away from him a little, thinking, and Corwin’s face rose before her mind’s eye. She saw again the confidence of his smiling, mocking eyes, and she shuddered. William seemed to feel it and gave her a quick look, but said nothing. The taxi had stopped in front of an old-fashioned inn. It was a long, low building with a glassed-in dining-room, built to accommodate the stream of motorists who had begun to tour the mountains and scatter gold and gasoline in their wake. Into the new dining-room--a plain, bare place with rows of white-covered tables and a few lean palms on pedestals--William conducted his wife. Half a dozen negro waiters came forward. He selected one he knew, chose a remote table, and gave his order for supper. “I suppose you want wine?” he said shortly to Fanchon--almost the first words he had addressed to her.