If Garth had appeared two minutes earlier, he need have suffered no uncertainty about Marise. But unfortunately she was not in these days the romantic heroine of a stage play. Characters did not come on or go off at just the right instant to work up her scenes in life. Therefore this unrehearsed effect ended with an anti-climax. Whether Severance were cast for hero or villain remained doubtful: and whether she had acted the noble wife or the weak lover was left vague: or at least, it was vague to the mind of Garth. He had no idea what Marise had done. He was sure only that Severance had done as much as she would let him do. By and by he expected to learn a great deal more: through the process of deduction.

"Good gracious, if I had called out, he would have heard me!" thought Marise; and was thankful that she hadn't. To yell for John Garth to rescue her from Tony Severance! That would have been too inane, too ridiculous. Nevertheless, a picture flashed vividly across her brain: Garth as he had looked that night at Mothereen's house when hearing her shriek he had bounded to her bedside from behind the screen. His collar had been off, his strong throat bare, his hair rumpled. It had occurred to Marise as she peeped from between her lashes that he'd make a fine model for a young Samson, newly sheared by Delilah.

The man's quiet voice and his drawled "Good afternoon, Severance," frightened her a little. She had seen him angry, but never violent. She felt convinced, somehow, that the angrier he was, the more quiet he would be—deadly quiet. Just why she felt that, she couldn't have explained, for she did not know him well—indeed, she knew him hardly at all. Yet she was sure—very sure. And she was sure also that his "good afternoon" didn't express Garth's real emotion at sight of Severance with her on the terrace of Vision House.

"What had I better do?" she wondered. "Go—or stay?"

She decided to stay, and keep peace between the two men if need be. Besides, she must hear what they would say to each other!

Severance had no conventional answer for Garth's "Good afternoon." He stood silent, staring and frowning, fingering his small black moustache.

"To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?" asked his host.

Severance had never been able to forget the scene between himself and Garth at the latter's hotel in New York. He was at heart more Greek than British; and the days are long past since Greeks were aggressive fighters. He shrank from any repetition of his experience at the Belmore, and had come to Vision House meaning not to rouse Garth to violent issues. That cool question was too much, however, for his prudence. Anyhow, even Garth wouldn't be brute enough to attack him before Marise!

"I have come to bring Miss Sorel a message from her mother, who wants her at Los Angeles," he said sharply.

"That might do if she were Miss Sorel," returned Garth. "But she isn't."

"She is professionally," said Severance.

"She's ceased to be a professional."

"Temporarily."

"Oh! Your point is that she's the temporary wife of a temporary gentleman, and that as such her time with the T.G. is up. Is that it?"

"Precisely."

"I see. You've come to wind up the arrangement?"

"I have. You must have been expecting me."

"I didn't let my mind dwell on you. How are you going to pay me my million—in banknotes, bonds or a cheque? Because I may as well inform you, I shall refuse to accept a cheque."

"I don't mean to offer you one."

"Very well. Have you got the million on you?"

"I have not! I haven't got it anywhere—that is, all of it. I shall pay you by instalments."

"I can't agree to accept the money like that."

"You'll have to!" exploded Severance. "There's nothing else you can do."

"You think so? We shall see. But it occurs to me that one instalment deserves another. You pay me by instalments: I allow my wife to go to her mother by instalments. Some of her trunks can go first."

"For God's sake don't joke about this thing!" broke out Severance. "It's too coarse—even for you."

"Strikes me that it would be coarser to take it seriously," said Garth. "And there's no need of doing that any more."

"What do you mean?" the other asked sharply.

"As I pointed out before, the 'bargain's' smashed to bits."

"Nothing of the sort!" Severance flung at him. "There wasn't a word spoken about handing you the whole million in a bunch."

"There was something said about handing it over in advance. It wasn't handed over."

"That was Marise's fault, not mine. She rushed on the marriage out of childish pique against me, never stopping to dream of the consequences."

"Which, however, haven't been very disastrous for her," said Garth. "Have they, Marise?"

"No—o," she murmured. "But oh, please, both of you—don't lose your heads!"

"Mine's on my shoulders," returned Garth calmly. "And I see an excrescence of some sort protruding from Severance's. You need have no fear for either of us. Still, if you prefer to wait indoors, we can get on without you for awhile."

"No, I'd rather stop where I am." Marise chose.

"To go back then," said Garth; "the fault, if it was a fault, anyhow wasn't mine. I obeyed the lady's commands and married her without haggling for money down. As there was no 'bargain' to stick to, I stuck to my post, the post of dummy husband, to oblige her, not for any mercenary reason. I shall go on sticking to it, if not to please her, or myself, just because I've got into the habit. I can't break that even for Mrs. Sorel; certainly not for you."

"I'm not talking of myself now," barked Severance. "I'm talking of Marise. She wants to be free. Surely you won't hold her against her will."

"Surely she can speak for herself!" said Garth.

Marise did not speak. Her senses began to whirl. She did not know what was to become of her. She couldn't tell what she wished would become of her! She felt as if a wave had swept over her head. She was drowning.

"No!" snapped Garth, when she remained silent, looking at neither, but gazing anxiously out towards the Canyon. "No, I agreed to play the dummy hand during your absence for the sum of a million dollars. I haven't got the million. But even if I had got it, I should have demanded a second million to clear out. There was nothing specified on that score in New York."

"It was taken for granted, of course!" said Severance. "There was no other meaning possible. We trusted to your honour."

"We?"

"Miss Sorel and I—and her mother."

"That's news to me. Perhaps I shall appreciate it as a compliment when I'm old—ninety or so. I don't now. I simply don't believe it."

"You think we lie?"

"First person singular, please! Marise hasn't spoken."

"Damn you!" broke out Severance, at the end of his tether, and for once reckless of consequences. "You refuse to let her go—you refuse equally to leave her."

"That's so," said Garth, with an exaggerated nasal twang which made Severance want to kill him for his insolence. He started forward, itching to strike; but something he saw in Garth's eyes brought him to a standstill. That confounded tooth episode was always "throwing itself up at him," so to speak! Fortunately, however, he remembered something at that instant—a weapon which he had almost overlooked, though it was within his grasp. He calmed himself with a kind of mental and physical stiffening.

"If you don't intend to carry out your agreement—I insist, your agreement—! why have you brought that secretary girl, Miss Marks, all the way from New York to El Toyar Hotel?" he hurled at Garth. "When I heard she was there and that you were constantly riding over from your place to see her, I supposed it was done on purpose to give Marise an easy chance to get her divorce. As it is——"

"As it is," Garth cut him short, "the affair is not your business."

"It's Marise's business, if it doesn't mean what I thought."

"Then let her attend to it. She's quite capable of doing that," said Garth. "And now, unless you can produce a million dollars at sight, or still better, two million, don't you think you'd be wise to blow back to your hotel? It'll soon be too dark to walk."

Severance turned furiously to the pale girl. "Marise—can you stand by and see me ordered away like this?"

She looked at him with a strange look which he could not read at all. "This is his house, Tony," she answered, in an odd, dull voice. "Not mine."

"I think you'd best go, for your own sake," said Garth. "But come back, of course, when you've got the money. If we're here then, we'll be glad to see you."

Severance turned without another word, even to Marise, and walked away as he had come, passing through the drawing-room. Garth started to follow, but Marise ran to him and stopped him with a small, ice-cold hand on his arm. "Why are you going after Lord Severance?" she whispered, her lips dry.

"Only to see that he doesn't lose himself somewhere in the house and hide under a table or sofa," Garth explained.

Her hand dropped. She let him go.

There was no fear of anything melodramatic, she saw. Yet she was not relieved. She felt as if she had some black, hollow, worn-out thing in her breast instead of a heart. It was heavy and useless, and hardly beat.

"That horrid girl!" she said half aloud when Garth had gone. "I always knew, really, she would be here. I believe he did give her the jewels, and Mothereen wangled them away from her somehow. He's pretending to follow Tony, and see him out. But he doesn't mean to come back here to me."

As she thought this, Garth came back.