Aliette had been gone an hour....

Moses Moffatt came in. Moses Moffatt cleared away the tea-things. Moses Moffatt asked: "Will you be dining at home, sir?" Some one answered, "No!" Moses Moffatt went out.

Aliette had been gone two whole hours. The some one became Ronald Cavendish.

He found that he must have been smoking cigarettes--one cigarette after the other. Ash and paper smoldered on the silver tray at his side. The room stank of tobacco. But tobacco could not drive away that other perfume--the perfume of Aliette's womanhood.

She had been in this very room! The essence of her still pervaded every nook of it. His imagination conjured up the image of her: Aliette dimpling to laughter: Aliette's brown eyes, now bright with joy, now dimmed with tears: the vivid of Aliette's hair: the little gestures of Aliette's hands. All these he saw, and possessed again in memory.

Again she lay in his arms. Again she let him kiss the tears from her eyes. Again she yielded him her hands, her hair. But she had yielded him more than these; she had yielded him her very thoughts: she had said, "I'm very weak; you're the only person who can help me."

Remembering those words, he grew ashamed. He must not think for himself: he must think for her. She had said that she would marry him if she were free. But there was only one way to freedom--unless Brunton let her divorce him. And that alternative she had refused to contemplate.

No! There was only one path to her freedom, to their happiness--the path of scandal. Dared he demand that sacrifice from her?

After all, why not? The scandal would be short-lived--the happiness enduring. She was Brunton's merely in name. She had no children. Legally, they might have to put themselves in the wrong; but morally they would be justified. Between them and happiness stood only the shibboleths.

Nevertheless, the shibboleths mattered. Shibboleths were the basis of all society.

Certain people, too--people like his mother,--hated divorce, believed it wicked. His mother still clung to the old faith. His mother would say: "God joined Aliette and Hector in holy matrimony. You have no right to sunder God's joining."

As though humanity were any deity's stud-farm!

CHAPTER IX