Her voice was so steady, her eyes so clear and direct, her manner so contained, that he was uncomfortably impressed.  He felt put upon the defensive.  As a matter of fact, in his first anger and surprise at what he still considered her shameless behavior, he had seriously considered the advisability of having Peter’s marriage annulled.  As soon as he had become calmer, his pride and obstinacy rejected such a course.  After all, no harm had been done.  She was very young.  And he hoped Glenn’s outspoken condemnation had taught her a needed and salutary lesson.  Looking at her this morning, he realized that she had been punished.  But that she should so calmly speak of divorcing Peter, of making way for some other woman, horrified him.

“You are talking immoral nonsense!” he said, angrily.  “Let him go, indeed!  Divorce your husband!  What are we coming to?  In my day marriage was binding.  No respectable husband or wife ever dreamed of divorce!”

“But they were real husbands and wives, weren’t they?” asked Nancy.

“All husbands and wives are real husbands and wives!” he thundered.

She considered this—­and him—­carefully.  “Then you don’t want Mr. Peter Champneys and me ever to be divorced?  I thought maybe you might.”

“I forbid you even to think such wickedness,” cried he, alarmed.  “A girl of your age talking in such a manner!  It’s scandalous, that’s what it is,—­scandalous!  Shows the dry-rot of our national moral sense, when the very children”—­he glared at Nancy—­“gabble about divorce!”

“Then I—­I mean, things are just to go along, the same as they have been?” She looked at him pleadingly.

For a few minutes he drummed on the library table with his thin brown fingers.  His bushy brows contracted.  He asked unexpectedly: 

“Would you like to go away for a while?  To travel?”

“Where?”

“Where?  Why, anywhere!  There’s a whole world to travel in, isn’t there?  Well, take Mrs. MacGregor and travel around in it, then.”

She shook her head.

“What’s the use?  Anywhere I went I’d have to go with me, wouldn’t I?  And I can’t seem to like the idea of traveling around with Mrs. MacGregor, either.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I don’t know,” said she, in a low voice.  And she added:  “So I think I might just as well stay right on here at home, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Well, if it pleases you, of course—­” he began doubtfully.

“If I do stay, you needn’t be afraid I’ll fall in love with anybody else you hire,” said she, with a faint flush.  “I’m only a fool the same way once.”  Her bomb-shell directness all but stunned him.  He stammered, confusedly: 

“Why—­very well then, very well then!  Quite so!  I see exactly what you mean!  I—­ah—­am very glad we understand each other.”  But as the door closed behind her, he mumbled to himself: