“But Mr. O’Neil told her his claims—­”

Gordon’s blazing eyes warned her.  “O’Neil, eh?  So, he is the ‘friend in the Land Office’!  No doubt he also gave Natalie the suggestion that led to her scene with you.  Tell her to occupy herself less with affairs which do not concern her and more with her own conduct.  Her actions with that upstart have been outrageous.”

“What about your own actions with the Golden woman?” cried Mrs. Gerard, reverting with feminine insistence to the subject of their first difference.  “What are you going to do about her?”

“Nothing.”

“Remember, I refuse to share the same roof with her.  You wouldn’t ask it of your wife.”

Now this second reference to a disagreeable subject was unfortunate.  Gordon was given to the widest vagaries of temper, and this interview had exasperated him beyond measure, for he was strained by other worries.  He exploded harshly: 

“Please remember that you are not my wife!  My ideas on matrimony will never change.  You ought to know by this time that I am granite.”

“I can’t give up Natalie.  I would give up much, for we women don’t change, but—­”

“A fallacy!” He laughed disagreeably.  “Pardon me, Gloria, if I tell you that you do change; that you have changed; that time has left its imprint upon even you—­a cruel fact, but true.”  He took a savage pleasure in her trembling, for she had roused all the devils in him and they were many.

“You are growing tired!”

“Not at all.  But you have just voiced the strongest possible argument against marriage.  We grow old!  Age brings its alterations!  I have ever been a slave to youth and beauty and the years bring to me only an increasing appreciation, a more critical judgment, of the beautiful.  If I chose to marry—­well, frankly, the mature charms of a woman of my own age would have slight attraction for me.”

“Then—­I will go,” said Mrs. Gerard, faintly.

“Not by any wish of mine,” he assured her.  “You are quite welcome to stay.  Things will run along in the usual way—­more smoothly, perhaps, now that we have attained a complete understanding.  You have no place to go, nor means with which to insure a living for yourself and Natalie.  I would hate to see you sacrifice yourself and her to a Puritanical whim, for I owe you much happiness and I’m sure I should miss you greatly.  Some one must rule, and since nature has given me the right I shall exercise it.  We will have no more rebellion.”

Mrs. Gerard left the room dazed and sick with despair.

“We must go!  We must go!” she kept repeating, but her tragic look alarmed Natalie far more than her words.

“Yes, yes!” The girl took her in her arms and tried to still the ceaseless trembling which shook the mother’s frame, while her own tears fell unheeded.

“We must go!  Now!”

“Yes, dearest!  But where?”

“You—­love me still?” asked Gloria.  “I suppose you need me, too, don’t you?  I hadn’t thought of that.”