She stiffened herself against feminine weakness. At the end of the story, Myra asked her: “What are you going to do?” “I’m going to carry on as if nothing had happened. At any rate for the present.” Myra nodded slowly. “You’re not the only one who has had to carry on as if nothing had happened.” “What do you mean?” Olivia asked quickly. “Nothing but what I said,” replied Myra. “It takes some doing. But you’ve got to believe in God and believe in yourself.” “Where did you get your wisdom from, Myra?” asked Olivia wonderingly. “From life, my dear,” replied Myra with unwonted softness. And picking up the last tray of removed dinner things, she left the room. The next afternoon, she said to Myra, “Major Olifant has telephoned me that Mr. Triona is arriving at Paddington by a six-fifteen train. I should like you to come with me.” “Very well,” said Myra. It was characteristic of their relations that they spoke not a word of Triona during their drive to the station or during their wait on the platform. When the train came in, and they had assured themselves that he had not arrived—for they had taken the precaution to separate and each to scan a half-section—they re-entered their waiting taxi-cab and drove home. “I hope I shall never see him again,” said Olivia, humiliated by this new deception. “He told Major Olifant he was coming straight to town by the train. The truth isn’t in him. You mustn’t suppose,” she turned rather fiercely to Myra, “that I came to meet him with any idea of reconciliation. That’s why I brought you with me. But people don’t part for ever in this hysterical way. There are decencies of life. There are the commonplace arrangements of a separation.” She burned with a new sense of wrong. Once more he had eluded her. Now, what she told Myra was true. She wished never to see him again. Blaise Olifant came up to town, anxious to be of service, and found her in this defiant mood. “It’s impossible for it all to end like this,” he said. “You are wounded to the quick. He’s in a state of crazy remorse. Time will soften things. He’ll come to his senses and return and ask your forgiveness, and you will give it.” She replied, “My dear Blaise, you don’t understand. The man I loved and married doesn’t exist.” “The man of genius exists. Listen,” said he. “After he left me, I’ve done scarcely anything but think of the two of you. He could have put forward a case—a very strong case—but he didn’t.” “And what was his strong case?” she asked bitterly. Olifant put before her his reasoned apologia for the life of Triona. Given the first deception practised under the obsession of the little black book acting on a peculiarly sensitive temperament, the rest followed remorselessly. “He was being blackmailed by one lie.” “My intelligence grasps what you say,” Olivia answered, “but my heart doesn’t. You’re standing away and can see things in the round. I’m in the middle of them, and I can’t.”