The moment he had that vital document safe in his breast-pocket, Lars Larssen was a changed man. His mask of cool indifference and his assumption of perfect leisure were thrown aside. His face was drawn with lines of anxiety as he snapped a rapid stream of orders at Sylvester:

"Send a wireless to the 'Aurelia' to put back at once to Plymouth. 'Phone Paddington to have a special ready for me in half-an-hour. 'Phone my house to pack me a portmanteau and send it to Paddington by fast car to catch the special. Get my office car round at once. Tell Bates and Carew and Grasemann I'd like them to travel with me to Plymouth to talk business. Let me know when all that's moving. Hurry!"

Sylvester sped away to execute his orders.

Larssen looked up at the portrait of his little boy, and the cablegram fluttered to the ground.

"What's the matter?" asked Olive.

"Pneumonia. Dangerously ill."

"Poor little chap!"

"My only child!"

"He'll get over it, I'm sure."

"He's never been strong and hardy."

"Still, with the best doctors...."

"If money can pull him through, I'll pour it out like water. I'm off to the States to look after those fool doctors. The 'Aurelia' is one of my fastest boats, and she'll take me across in five days. I'll give treble pay to every engineer and stoker."

"How long will you be away?"

"Can't say exactly."

"How unfortunate, just at this time!"

"I can finish off the Hudson Bay deal by wireless. My ordinary business on this side will run on in the hands of Bates, Carew, and Grasemann, who form my executive committee for London."

They had both ignored Matheson through this conversation. He was squeezed dry and done with. Larssen had no further use for him at present, and Olive had no sympathy to waste on a beaten man.

He had been sitting brokenly in a chair at the desk where he had signed away his independence, gazing into a new-spilt ink-blot on the polished surface of the desk, seeing visions in its glistening, blue-black pool.

But now he pushed back his chair with a rasping noise and rose decisively to face Larssen.

"We'll call it a month's truce!" he flung out.

"What d'you mean?"

"For a month from now neither you nor I will move further in the Hudson Bay scheme. For a month it'll be hung up."

"Who's to hang it up?"

"I."

"But I've got your signed approval in my pocket. Signed and witnessed!"

"The issue is not yet underwritten." It was a sheer guess, but in Larssen's face Matheson could read that his guess was correct.

"Well?" snapped Larssen.

"Either you or I will tell the underwriters that the scheme goes no further until a month from date—until May 3rd. Which is it to be—you or I?"

Sylvester came in rapidly. "All your orders are being carried out, and the car's on the way here from the garage."

For a few tense moments Larssen hesitated. The underwriting of the five-million issue was an absolute essential to a successful flotation, and the negotiations were not yet completed. If Matheson were to interfere in them during his absence from London, big difficulties might develop. Before that cablegram arrived, the shipowner could have beaten down any such threat on Matheson's part, but now, with his little son calling for his presence, with the special train at Paddington coupling up to speed him to Plymouth, with the "Aurelia" turning back, against the protest of its thousand passengers, to take him on board, the situation was radically changed.

Matheson had realised the altered situation, and putting aside any over-fine scruples, had gripped advantage from it.

Larssen's eyes blazed anger at the financier. Then he held out his hand to Olive.

"Good-bye!" he said.

"Good-bye!" she answered, taking his hand.

"You or I?" repeated Matheson.

The shipowner turned at the door through which he was hurrying out.

"I," he conceded.

"Then sign on it."

"Don't sign!" cried Olive.

"He must sign!"

Larssen rushed back to his desk and scribbled on a sheet of paper: "Until May 3rd, I fix up nothing with the underwriters."

He scrawled his signature under it, and without further word hurried from the throne-room.

Matheson and his wife were left alone.

When Larssen had closed the door behind him, Olive felt as if a big strong arm of support had suddenly been taken away from her. Larssen's mere presence, even if he remained silent, gave her a fictitious sense of her own power, which now was crumbling away and leaving her with a feeling of insecurity and self-distrust.

Openly it expressed itself in peevish annoyance.

"Why couldn't you have stayed away altogether?" she muttered fretfully. "Nobody wanted you back. Your scruples, indeed! I must say you have a pretty mixed set of them. If you had had any consideration for me, you'd have stayed away altogether, instead of coming back and making scenes of this kind. I hate scenes! And why did you force that month's wait at the last moment? Now things are complicated worse than ever!"

Matheson waited patiently for his wife to finish the recital of her complaints. He wondered if it were possible to appeal once more to her better feelings. At all events he would make the attempt. The signature he had forced out of Larssen had given him back some of his self-respect, and he felt his brain as it were cleared for action once more.

When Olive had finished, Matheson asked her quietly: "Why did you marry me?"

"Why did you marry me?" she retorted.

"Because I honestly believed at the time that I loved you."

"I suppose you found out afterwards that you'd made a mistake, and then blamed it on to me?"

"I'm not blaming you—I'm trying to get the right perspective on to our marriage. I'm wondering if the woman I loved was yourself, or merely my idealization of you."

"I can't help it if I'm not the incarnation of all the virtues you imagined me to be!" Olive sat down and played nervously with a penholder, jabbing meaningless lines and dots on to a loose sheet of paper.

"When I married you, I thought you were in sympathy with me over the big things of life—the things that matter. But you turned them aside with a laugh. That put a barrier between us."

"I never could stand prigs. I thought I was marrying a man of the world."

"We seemed to be radically opposed in ideas. We drifted farther and farther away from one another. At the end of five years, our marriage was empty even of tepid affection. If there had been children, perhaps...."

"No doubt you'd have wanted to wheel them out in the perambulator!"

Matheson let the flippancy pass. He continued steadily: "I felt I could not do my big work under the constant friction of our married life, and my life in the financial world. I felt you longed for complete liberty."

"I did, and I do so still."

"So, when opportunity came to me on the night of March 14th, I made the sudden decision you know of. I thought I had cut myself loose. If it had not been for that one unthought-of thread—Larssen's scheme to use me dead or alive—I should never have come back.... My sudden decision was wrong. I realise now that no man can cut himself utterly loose from the life he has woven for himself. He is part of the pattern of the great web of humanity. He is joined to the world around him by a thousand threads. If he tries to cut loose, there will always be some one unnoticed thread linking him to the old life."

"That sort of thing may be interesting to people who're interested in it. It merely bores me."

"Olive, I want to say this: I'm ready to try once more. I'm ready to take up our married life as we started it on our wedding day. I'll try to forget the past and start afresh. I'll make allowances for you—will you make allowances for me?"

Olive laughed mirthlessly. "In plain words, that means you want me to be somebody I've never pretended to be and never want to be. The idea is fatuous."

"Won't you believe me when I say that I'm genuinely anxious to do the right thing by you, and clear up the tangle I've made of your life and mine? I'm sorry for what I said in Larssen's presence a little while ago. I was angry and carried beyond myself."

"No apology can wipe out that sort of thing."

"I'll do my best to make amends.... You're not looking at all well. There's a big change in you. Monte Carlo does you no good—the reverse in fact. Why not see a doctor and get him to prescribe you a tonic and a quiet place to build up your health in? We'll go there together and start our married life afresh."

"You've had your say—now let me have mine!" flung out Olive. "When we married, I was mistaken too. I thought at the time you were a man who could do things. I judged on your previous career. After we were married, I found I was utterly misled. It isn't in you to climb to the top. You've too many sides to your nature. First one thing pulls you one way, and then another thing pulls you another way. To succeed, a man has to run in blinkers—straight on without minding the side issues. I imagined you a hundred per center, and I found you only a ninety per center. You can't climb to the top—it isn't in you!"

"Climb to where?"

Olive looked around at the vast throne-room of the shipowner, and her meaning was conveyed in the glance.

"Larssen has that final ten per cent.," admitted Matheson. "But do you know what it means in plain language?"

"What?"

"Utter unscrupulousness. Utter ruthlessness. Napoleon had that extra ten per cent. Bismarck had it. You're right when you say I haven't it."

Olive moved irritably in her chair. "Sour grapes," she commented.

"Call it that if you wish."

She dug her pen viciously into the polished surface of the desk, leaving the holder quivering at the outrage.

"Larssen has been merely playing with you," continued Matheson. "I don't want to blame, but to warn. I know the man far better than you do. He thinks you might be useful to him."

"What are you going to do when the month is up?" she asked abruptly.

"What do you want me to do?"

She looked him straight in the eye, her pupils narrowed with hate. "Go out of my life!"

"A legal separation?"

"No use at all. That ties me indefinitely."

"What then?"

"One of two things: divorce or disappearance."

"You mean a framed-up divorce? The usual arranged affair?"

"No, I don't. I mean a divorce with that Verney woman as co-respondent."

"I'll not have you insult her by calling her 'that Verney woman!'"

"Miss Verney, then.... It's either divorce or total disappearance."

"Larssen spoke glibly enough of disappearance, but the circumstances are very different now from what they were on the night of March 14th. Then, not a soul outside myself knew of my intention. You'd have claimed leave from the Courts to presume death, and it would certainly have been granted you. You would legally have been a widow, and I—as Clifford Matheson—should legally have been dead.... But now, both you and Larssen, and his secretary as well, know that Clifford Matheson is alive."

"Does anyone else know?"

"No one."

"Larssen will certainly keep the secret. So will his secretary. So shall I. That's no difficulty."

"You mean to apply to the courts for a certificate of my death, knowing that it will be fraudulent."

"That, or divorce against you and Miss Verney." The lines of obstinacy were hard-set around her mouth.

"Why are you so bitter against her?"

Olive remained contemptuously silent. Her reason, as she saw it, should be obvious enough. If Clifford was so dense as not to see it, she was certainly not going to enlighten him.

Even in face of what had gone before, Matheson was still hoping to soften his wife towards Elaine. He tried again. "Her life is ruined. Her work was her happiness as well as her livelihood. Now, both are snatched away from her. She is an orphan; she has no relatives in sympathy with her; her means are very limited; she has heavy expenses to face over the operation and the convalescence. She is under Hegelmann's care at Wiesbaden. This very morning he is operating on her. I must go back to Wiesbaden at once to hear how things are going."

"You can wire and find out."

"I prefer to go personally."

"Is she so very attractive to you?"

Matheson, sick at heart, reached for his hat and stick preparatory to taking his leave.

A sudden thought struck Olive. "You swear to me that you've told no one you're Clifford Matheson?"

"No one knows beyond yourself, Larssen, and Sylvester."

"And you'll tell no one else?"

"I must reserve that right."

"It's not in our bargain!" protested Olive. "You were to disappear completely."

"It won't affect our bargain," he retorted.

"That's for me to say."

"Heaven knows that I've given up to you enough already!"

"I ask you to swear to me you'll never tell anyone else! Not even hint at it!"

"I can't promise it."

"That's your last word?"

"Yes."

Olive flashed hate at him. Her hands were quivering when she answered, as though she could have torn him in pieces.

"Very well, then! I'll reserve my right of action too!" Her fingers reached for the electric bell and pressed it imperatively.

When Sylvester appeared, she said decisively: "Have a cab called for Mr RiviÈre."

"Certainly," he answered.

The financier took up hat and stick, and with a cold "good-bye" passed out of the open door, Sylvester following him.

Presently the secretary returned to confer with Olive. Larssen had told him to keep in touch with her.

Clifford Matheson was once more John RiviÈre. He picked up his valise at the Avon Hotel and caught the first boat train for Germany. It took him to the Continent via Queenboro'—Flushing.

His thoughts on the railway journey to Queenboro' were very different to those which had filled his mind when he sped Calaiswards on his way to England. Then, he had felt as if he had just plunged into an ice-cold lake, and emerged tingling in every limb with the vigour of health renewed. The course before him had seemed straight; the issue clean-cut.

Now, he felt as if he had been tripped up and pushed bodily into a pool of mire.

Circumstances seemed more tangled than ever. Finality had not been reached either in regard to his relations towards his wife, towards Elaine, or towards Larssen; in regard to the Hudson Bay scheme, or in his regard to his future freedom for work on the lines he so earnestly desired. The whirlpool had sucked him back, and he was once more battling with swirling waters.

Out of all the welter of his thoughts one course became clearer and clearer. He must tell Elaine. He must put her in possession of the main facts of the situation which had developed in Larssen's office. That he could tell her without violating the spirit of his bargain with Olive was certain. He knew he could trust absolutely in Elaine's silence.

Till then—till he had told her—there was no definite line of action he could see as the one inevitable solution.

If the elements had seemed to bar his passage to London the day before, to-day they seemed to be calling welcome to him as train and boat sped him eastwards. The marshes of the Swale were almost a joyous emerald green under the sparkle of the sun in the early afternoon; the estuary of the Thames was alive with white and brown sail swelling full-bloodedly to the drive of a care-free, joyful breeze; torpedo-boats and destroyers sped in and out from Sheerness with the supple strength of greyhounds unleashed, tossing the blue waters in curling locks of foam from their bows; the open sea sparkled and glinted and danced with the joy of life in its veins.

At sundown, the sky behind the foaming wake of the packet was a blaze of glory. The sinking sun wove a cloth of gold on the halo of cloud about it, and circled the horizon with a belt of rose and opal. Gradually the gold faded into fiery purple, with arms of unbelievable green stretching out to clasp the round cup of ocean; the purple died away reluctantly like the drums of a triumphant march receding to a distance; night took sea and sky into her arms, and crooned to them a mother-song of rest.

On the railway station at Flushing a telegram was handed to RiviÈre—the reply to a telegram of inquiry sent by him from London. It was from Elaine herself:

"Operation well over. Doctor hopeful. Little pain. Glad when you are back," it ran, and he had almost worn through its creases, by reason of folding and unfolding, before he fell asleep that night in the train for Wiesbaden.