Her voice trembled with a seeming of repressed emotion of suffering under injustice and of bearing, with fortitude, a life of cumulative injury.  Had Paul been bent on persuading her to remedy her alleged mistake, he could hardly have asked a more propitious opportunity.

But this man was capable of no swift and positive decisions.  It was not his to cut Gordian knots.  Never before had the woman across from him seemed so alluring, so desirable.  Never had she so fully stirred his susceptible senses to intoxication as she did at this moment, and never had he felt his fondness for her so genuine.  Yet, when she seemed almost to offer him herself and her life—­if only he would stretch out his arm and lift her across the stream of dilemma—­he could not urge, but sat tongue-tied.  He could think only of the difficulties; and the thought of them staggered and blinded him.  This was not the indecision of a man weighing the responsibilities of a step which might ruin the life of another man; it was merely the futility of “the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.”

“If your husband should hear of this meeting, after your promise of this morning,” suggested Paul, “it might have serious results—­I mean for you.”

She shuddered a little at the thought.  “I believe he would become a maniac,” she answered, “but this place is safe enough.  He would never think of our coming here.  It’s too far down-town.”

“Too far for calling or shopping,” Paul reminded her.  “So entirely out of your accustomed orbit that if he learned of this, he could construe it only one way—­as a clandestine conference.”

“But, Paul,” she declared, with deep self-pity and a strong appeal to his instincts of knight-errantry, “I had to talk with you—­at any risk.  If—­if—­it does come to a separation, I shall have absolutely nothing.”  Her voice was pathetic.  “I suppose I should have to go to work.”

She looked sadly at him and shook her dark head until he hated himself for not assuring her that she would not have to “go to work,” yet he could say nothing.

Then as they sat there in an embarrassed silence, the tall figure of Len Haswell appeared in the door and the many mirrors of the wall panels multiplied him into a seeming army of giants.

With him was Norvil Thayre.  For such a development Paul Burton found himself totally unprepared.  No ready phrases came to his lips and his sudden pallor was a seeming confession of guilt.  The husband stood for a moment in the door and his face, too, paled, but that was only momentary.  At once it became fixed in a resolute determination to remain expressionless.  The alert mind of Thayre, grasping the situation, addressed itself to averting its awkwardness with artless and inconsequential small talk.  He came over to the table and shook hands, while Len Haswell stood at his elbow, saying nothing.  Paul instinctively offered his hand, but Len ignored it.  He heard Loraine declaring with a charmingly assumed innocence, “Chance brings us into quite a little party.  First I happen on Mr. Burton, then on you two.”