I  
The blood of youth is hot. He followed her, in spite of all, forgetting all. They had advanced across the hall toward the gold room, or library.
 
"Oh, Charley, Charley! Don't begin, wait a little," she wailed. "At least till to-night, till afternoon. I don't know what to say yet. I don't know what to do! Let us see him first, and tell him."
 
"Look about you," he commented grimly. "You're going to lose all this—all these splendid, beautiful things."
 
"I don't mind losing them. I want to be poor. Oh, my God! Just to be loved, and clean! Charley, can we?"
 
"But why choose me? There are so many others!"
 
"All like Mr. Rawn himself—men crazed of money, power, selfishness. I wanted something different. Do you think it could have been my father's old ideas coming out in me, so late? He came of a family of revolutionists—independents; 'Progressives,' they call them now. Something of his beliefs—I don't know what it was—"
 
"But you'll have to leave him in any case. Divorce is simple enough. You know what I would have done, and done, also, in any case. Grace and I—"
 
"Yes, I know all about everything. Everything's past," she said despairingly. "We're dead. It's all over!"
 
"I ought to go?" he asked vaguely.
 
"Yes, pretty soon. But I suppose you'll have to see Grace, and—to-night I'll have to see—"
 
He bowed his head. "Yes, we've got to pay that part first. The best we can do and all we can give ought to be enough for him."
 
 
 
 
II
 
She turned, left him, passing through the great doors to the central rooms within. Following her still, he found her at the stair and joined her. There approached them now, with hasty tread and face somewhat excited, the medical man who had been for so many days now in attendance upon Grace Rawn and her child. He had come on his morning visit unnoticed by them.
 
"Ah," he began, "I'm glad to find you, Mrs. Rawn—and you, Mr. Halsey—I've been looking for you—Come! Come quickly!" His face showed plainly his agitation.
 
"Is there anything wrong?" demanded Halsey sharply. "What's the trouble?"
 
"It is my duty to tell you the truth," began the doctor. "Your wife is a very sick woman, indeed."
 
"I know that, y............