"But this visit involved my promise, otherwise I wouldn't have asked him. I want to tell you that it's all right about the yacht--your sending for her, I mean. She'll be on hand to-morrow." "Thanks, Chancellor." Her tone had changed to one of complete weariness. "Now leave me, please." "Leave you," I exclaimed. "I'll do nothing of the kind! The two-day ban is off, and Monsieur has told me I can say anything I please!" "And having his permission to say anything you please, did you rehearse it before him, too?" This left me helpless, fervently wishing I'd had more of Tommy's experience with girls' moods. He knew a lot about them, and would have understood just what to do. But I felt suddenly enraged--not at her, but at everything, and cried: "I don't give a damn for him or his permission! He shan't take you away!" For the first time she smiled, and held out her hands to me, saying: "That's good-medicine-talk, Jack. I like it even if it won't cure me. Say it again--that you don't give a damn for him!" I would have said something in an entirely different way had not Echochee been moving about the next room, but I kneeled, leaning over her, keeping her hand and whispering: "He shan't dominate our lives! You're going back with me--don't you know you are?" "Don't make me sorry you came, Jack," she said softly. "I must go with him. So let's talk of other things and keep our last evening here from being a horror." "I've got to talk about it, as I've got to breathe and think and move and love you! It's all one! It's my existence, and if you went away it would be like tearing me to pieces!" "Oh, but don't you see that I must," she cried despairingly. "I didn't close my eyes all night, thinking, thinking, thinking! It was agony. It's agony now. But my decision's been through the fire, Jack, and I know I'm right!" "No decision counts for anything against all you mean to me!" "Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry!" she moaned, looking at me without dissimulation and letting me see that her face was marked by a solemnity and tragedy that wrung my heart. "God," she whispered, putting her hand to my forehead, "how I suffer while I see your tortured eyes!" "Then out of sorrow, pity, tell me what the fellow said," I implored, nearly beside myself. "Let me know the strength of your duty, so my own strength can have a chance. It isn't fair to make a beggar of me when I might be fighting for happiness! Let me see his weapons so I can strike back; then, if I lose, I'll lose standing up--and the future," I added, less impetuously, "isn't so gray to the man who loses standing up." She had turned away with a quick gesture of anguish and seemed to be crying, but when she looked at me again there were no signs of tears. "He says others have demands and rights, and the many must outweigh the few." "That depends on the greatness of each side's claims," I began, when she interrupted by continuing: