“If I could hear her speak from her heart as I just have heard you, then I could decide,” answered Elnora.

“She is on the ocean,” said Philip.  “She went because she knew she was wholly in the wrong.  She had nothing to say, or she would have remained.”

“That sounds plausible,” reasoned Elnora, “but it is pretty difficult to find a woman in an affair that involves her heart with nothing at all to say.  I fancy if I could meet her, she would say several things.  I should love to hear them.  If I could talk with her three minutes, I could tell what answer to make you.”

“Don’t you believe me, Elnora?”

“Unquestioningly,” answered Elnora.  “But I would believe her also.  If only I could meet her I soon would know.”

“I don’t see how that is to be accomplished,” said Philip, “but I am perfectly willing.  There is no reason why you should not meet her, except that she probably would lose her temper and insult you.”

“Not to any extent,” said Elnora calmly.  “I have a tongue of my own, while I am not without some small sense of personal values.”

Philip glanced at her and began to laugh.  Very different of facial formation and colouring, Elnora at times closely resembled her mother.  She joined in his laugh ruefully.

“The point is this,” she said.  “Some one is going to be hurt, most dreadfully.  If the decision as to whom it shall be rests with me, I must know it is the right one.  Of course, no one ever hinted it to you, but you are a very attractive man, Philip.  You are mighty good to look at, and you have a trained, refined mind, that makes you most interesting.  For years Edith Carr has felt that you were hers.  Now, how is she going to change?  I have been thinking—­thinking deep and long, Phil.  If I were in her place, I simply could not give you up, unless you had made yourself unworthy of love.  Undoubtedly, you never seemed so desirable to her as just now, when she is told she can’t have you.  What I think is that she will come to claim you yet.”

“You overlook the fact that it is not in a woman’s power to throw away a man and pick him up at pleasure,” said Philip with some warmth.  “She publicly and repeatedly cast me off.  I accepted her decision as publicly as it was made.  You have done all your thinking from a wrong viewpoint.  You seem to have an idea that it lies with you to decide what I shall do, that if you say the word, I shall return to Edith.  Put that thought out of your head!  Now, and for all time to come, she is a matter of indifference to me.  She killed all feeling in my heart for her so completely that I do not even dread meeting her.