Vance continued to sit there. He had imagined he had suffered on the day when he had seen his grandfather down by the river with Floss Delaney: poor simpleton! That was a wound to his raw senses. He had escaped from it by writing it out and selling it to an editor. But now there was not a vein of his body, not a cell of his brain, not a dream or a vision of his soul, that was not hurt, disabled. . . . This woman who had kindled in him the light by which he lived had sat there complacently telling him that she believed in his work, that her husband and old Frenside believed in it . . . and had thought she was leaving him comforted!

But did she really think so? Or was all she had said only a protective disguise, the conscientious effort to repress emotions corresponding to his own? He had an idea she would be very conscientious, full of scruples he wasn’t sure he wholly understood. For if she hadn’t cared as much as he did, why should she have devoted all those hours to helping him? If it was just for the good of the New Hour, she was indeed the ideal wife for an editor! But no: those afternoons had been as full for her as for him. What was that phrase she had pointed out, in the volume of Keats’s Letters she had given him — about loading every rift with gold? That was what they had done to their hours together: both of them.

Suddenly, as he sat brooding, he heard a door open: then, after a moment’s delay, a step coming through the empty rooms. The carpets muffled it, the stealing twilight seemed to envelop it; but it was hers, hers surely — who else would have business there? She was returning, coming back to say all the things that were surging in his heart. . . . He sat still, not daring to look up.

The step drew nearer, reached the threshold, clicked on the parquet of the library. He started up and saw Mrs. Tracy. In the faint light her face looked so drawn and wretched that he thought she had been taken ill again, and went toward her hurriedly.

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Matter? It IS a woman you come to meet here then!” She had reached the table, and with a quick pounce picked up a glove which lay there. “That’s what you call your literary work, is it?” she triumphed venomously.

Vance stood silent. His mind was still so charged with ardent and agonizing thoughts that he could not grasp what she was saying. What was she talking about, what was she trying to insinuate, what had she come for? Once more he caught in her face the gleam of animosity he had been conscious of, just below the surface, ever since he had gone with Upton to the ball game.

“Well, haven’t you got anything to say? No, I don’t suppose you have!” Mrs. Tracy taunted him.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say. I don’t know what you’re talking about. That glove is Mrs. Tarrant’s — she left here only a few minutes ago.”

Mrs. Tracy’s sallow face grew sallower. He saw that she was unprepared for the answer and not wholly inclined to believe it. “Mrs. Tarrant — what was she doing here?”

“She came to see me.”

“And what were you doing here?”

“Writing, as you see.”

Mrs. Tracy was silent for a moment, her eyes fixed incredulously on the piled-up pages before her. “I’d like to know who it is lets you in,” she said at length.

“Why, Mrs. Tarrant let me in today, of course.”

“Today! Maybe she did. I’m not talking only about today. It’s not the only day you’ve been here.”

Vance hesitated. He had expected to silence his mother-in-law, and dispel her suspicions, by naming Mrs. Tarrant — one of the few persons who had the undisputed right to come and go in that house. But it would be a different matter, he instantly felt, to let Mrs. Tracy associate Halo’s name with the frequent and clandestine visits of which she evidently suspected him. He was convinced now that she had come on purpose to surprise him, as the result of information received; and he was never ready-witted in emergencies.

“Well, I don’t know’s I need ask who lets you in,” she pursued. “You had plenty of time to have duplicate keys made while I was sick.”

“Certainly I had — if it had occurred to me to do anything so low~down.”

“Low-down? I guess it isn’t that would have prevented you, if you’d been set on coming here, whether it was to steal books or to meet women . . . maybe both . . .” she flung back, trembling.

Her agitation had a steadying effect on Vance. “Why not both, as you say?” he rejoined impartially, beginning to gather up his papers. He was sure she was not there without a definite purpose, and it was obviously safer to leave the burden of explanation on her shoulders. After all, he had nothing to reproach himself with but the venial wrong of concealing from Laura Lou that he did his writing at the Willows, and not at the New Hour office. He had been slaving all summer to pay off the money Mrs. Tracy had accepted from Bunty Hayes, and the women had better leave him alone, or he’d know why. . . . Silently he crammed his papers into their usual storing-place and walked toward the door.

Mrs. Tracy stepped in front of him. “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Home? It’s a place you don’t often trouble. Why don’t you do your writing there — if it’s writing you say you come here for?”

“Because I’m never left alone,” he said, his anger rising again. Mrs. Tracy saw her chance and laughed. “Not with the right woman, you mean?”

Vance halted in front of her. After all, if there was a scene coming — and he saw she was not to be cheated out of it — better have it out here than wait and risk Laura Lou’s being drawn in. “What is it you’re driving at? I can’t answer till I know,” he said sullenly.

“Well, answer me this, then. Who’s the woman you come here to meet?”

The blood rose to his face. “Nonsense. I told you Mrs. Tarrant came here today. You’d better give me her glove and I’ll take it back to her.”

Mrs. Tracy paid no attention to this. She hesitated a moment; then she said: “You haven’t answered my question yet. It’s no good beating round the bush. The neighbours all know about what’s been going on here. Laura Lou’s had a letter warning her. You say, what am I driving at? Well, I’m here to find out what you propose to do, now we’ve caught you. That’s plain enough, isn’t it?” She flung the words out in a kind of shrill monotone, as if she had learned them from someone else and were afraid of not getting them in the right order.

Vance was speechless. His mind had seized on one phrase: “Laura Lou’s had a letter,” and he turned sick with an unformed apprehension. “What nonsense are you talking? What kind of letter? I’ve got nothing to hide and nothing to explain. If you have the letter with you, you’d better let me see it, and if I can find the sneak who wrote it I’ll go and break his neck.”

Mrs. Tracy laughed. “Well, you’ll have some trouble doing that, I guess. But the letter isn’t here — it’s locked up at home. It’s done enough harm to my poor child already — ”

“Who wrote it?” Vance interrupted.

“It’s not signed.”

“I thought as much. That kind never is. And you’ve come here to spy on me on the strength of a rag of paper with God knows what anonymous slander on it?” He took his hat up again, and as he did so, his eye lit on the keys which Halo, in leaving, had laid beside him. They were no good to him now; he would never use them again, never come back here without her. He would take them back to Eaglewood this very night, with the glove . . . .

He put them in his pocket and turned again to his mother-in-law. “I come here to work, not to meet women.” This sounded impressive, and in a way was true — yet he didn’t care for the ring of it. He cleared his throat, and began again: “If you’ll give me Mrs. Tarrant’s glove I’ll send it back.”

For all answer Mrs. Tracy opened her handbag (it was the very one the bridal couple had bought for her on their return to Paul’s Landing), and put the glove in it, snapping shut the imitation ivory clasp.

“See here — give me that glove,” Vance burst out; then crimsoned at his blunder. Mrs. Tracy tucked the bag under her arm. “I’ll see to returning it,” she said.

He affected indifference. “Oh, very well — ” There was a pause, and then he added. “If that’s all, I’ll be off.”

Mrs. Tracy, however, continued to oppose him from the threshold. “It’s not all — nothing like. I guess it’s for me to decide about that.”

Vance waited a moment: angry as he was, he had the sense to want to check Mrs. Tracy’s recriminations. “If there’s anything else to be said, I guess it’s for Laura Lou to say it. I’m going back home now to give her the chance,” he declared.

Mrs. Tracy raised her hand in agitation. “No, Vance — no! You won’t do that. The letter’s half killed her, anyway. And you know she can’t stand anything that excites and worries her . . . .” She paused a moment, and added with a certain dignity: “That’s why I came here — it was to spare her.”

Vance pondered. “Was it her idea that you should come?”

“No, she doesn’t even know I’m here. I told her we’d have to take steps to find out — but she was so upset she wouldn’t listen. My child’s a nervous wreck, Vance. That’s what you’ve made of her.”

“If I’ve made her a nervous wreck, is it your idea that it’s going to quiet her if you go back and report — as you apparently mean to do — that I come here to meet other women?”

The reasoning of this was a little too close for Mrs. Tracy’s flurried brain. She considered it for a while, and then said: “I didn’t come here to go back and report to her.”

Vance looked at her in astonishment. “Then what on earth did you come for? Your imagination is so worked up against me that all my denials wouldn’t convince you — I see that. But if Laura Lou’s to be left out of the question — ”

His mother-in-law moved nearer to him, with a look of appeal in her face that made it human again. “It all depends on you, Vance.”

“Well, you don’t suppose — ”

“I don’t suppose you want to hurt Laura Lou more than you can help — any more than I do,” she continued, with an effort at persuasiveness. “And what I’m here for is to ask you to spare her . . . give her a chance . . . before it’s too late . . . .” She lifted her hands entreatingly. “For God’s sake, Vance, let her go without a fight. It’s her chance now, and I mean she shall take it; but if you’ll let it be easy for her, I’ll let it be easy for you — on my sacred word. Vance . . . See here; I’ve got you where I can make my own terms with you . . . I’ve got my proofs . . . I’ve got the whip hand of as they say . . .” She broke off, and went on in an altered voice: “But that’s not the way I want to talk to you, Vance. I just want to say: Why not recognize it’s all been a failure and a mistake from the first, and set my child free before it’s too late?”

“Too late for what?”

“For her to get back her health — to enjoy her youth as she ought to . . . .”

Vance’s brain was still so confused with the shock of Mrs. Tarrant’s abrupt leave-taking that this fresh assault on his emotions left him dazed. Mrs. Tracy hated him; had always hated him. He had long been carelessly aware of that, and had instantly seen how eagerly she must have caught at this chance of getting the whip hand of him, as she called it; of finding herself justified in all her disappointments and resentments. But he had not suspected that she might have a more practical object in mind, that what she wanted was not to injure him but to free Laura Lou. It was dull of him, no doubt, it was incomprehensible even, that, having lived all his life in a world of painless divorce, where a change of mate was often a mere step in social advancement, it should never have occurred to him that he and Laura Lou could part. But though he had often chafed at the bondage of his unconsidered marriage, though he had long since ceased to think of his wife as the companion of his inner life, and had stooped to subterfuges to escape her fond solicitude . . . yet now her mother’s proposal filled him with speechless wrath. He and Laura Lou divorced! . . . He turned to Mrs. Tracy. “Are you talking seriously?”

Of course she was, she said. Wouldn’t he try and understand her and listen to her, and not get all worked up, and make her so nervous she couldn’t get out what she had to say . . .?

“HAVE to say?” he interrupted. “Who obliges you? You say Laura Lou doesn’t know you’re here.”

Mrs. Tracy’s embarrassment increased. When Vance flew out at her like that, she said, she couldn’t keep her wits together; and what was to be gained by making a fuss, anyhow? She was determined, whatever he said, that her child should be free to make a fresh start, and get back her health and spirits. . . . She talked on and on in the same half scared yet obstinate tone. They’d been married too young, ............