“Yes.”  He sat down again reluctantly.

“I was Mathilde’s age—­a little older.  I was more in love than she.  And if he had been asked the question I just asked you, he could have answered it.  He could have said:  ’I have been a leader in a group in which I was, an athlete, an oarsman, and the most superb physical specimen of my race’—­brought up, too, he might have added, in the same traditions that I had had.  Well, that wasn’t enough, Mr. Wayne, and that was a good deal.  If my father had only made me wait, only given me time to see that my choice was the choice of ignorance, that the man I thought a hero was, oh, the most pitifully commonplace clay—­Mathilde shan’t make my mistake.”

Wayne’s eyes lit up.

“But that’s it,” he said.  “She wouldn’t make your mistake.  She’d choose right.  That’s what I ought to have said.  You spoke of Mathilde’s spirit.  She has a feeling for the right thing.  Some people have, and some people are bound to choose wrong.”

Adelaide laid her hand on her breast.

“You mean me?” she asked, too much interested to be angry.

He was too absorbed in his own interests to give his full attention to hers.

“Yes,” he answered.  “I mean your principles of choice weren’t right ones—­leaders of men, you know, and all that.  It never works out.  Leaders of men are the ones who always cry on their wives’ shoulders, and the martinets at home are imposed on by every one else.”  He gave out this dictum in passing:  “But don’t trouble about your responsibility in this, Mrs. Farron.  It’s out of your hands.  It’s our chance, and Mathilde and I mean to take it.  I don’t want to give you a warning, exactly, but—­it’s going to go through.”

She looked at him with large, terrified eyes.  She was repeating, ’they cry on their wives’ shoulders,’ or, he might have said, ’on the shoulders of their trained nurses.’  She knew that he was talking to her, saying something.  She couldn’t listen to it.  And then he was gone.  She was glad he was.

She sat quite still, with her hands lying idly, softly in her lap.  It was possible that what he said was true.  Perhaps all these people who made such a show of strength to the world were those who sucked double strength by sapping the vitality of a life’s companion.  It had been true of Joe Severance.  She had heard him praised for the courage with which he went forth against temptation, but she had known that it was her strength he was using.  She looked up, to see her daughter, pale and eager, standing before her.

“O Mama, was it very terrible?”

“What, dear?”

“Did Pete tell you of our plan?”

Adelaide wished she could have listened to those last sentences of his; but they were gone completely.

She put up her hand and patted the unutterably soft cheek before her.

“He told me something about putting through your absurd idea of an immediate marriage,” she said.