Ben stood silent, caught in the grip of an intellectual dilemma which he felt every instant would dissolve itself and which didn’t.

Crystal for the first time moved away from her father.  “Those are my terms,” she said.  “I stay with the man who agrees to them, and if you both decline them—­well, I’ll go off and try and open the oyster by myself.”

There was a long momentous pause, and then Tomes’s discreet knock on the door.

“Mr. Verriman on the telephone, madam.”

“I can’t come,” said Crystal.  “Ask him to send a message.”

“Don’t you see, Crystal, what your plan would do?” said her father.  “Either it would make Moreton a red revolutionist and me a persecuting Bourbon, or else it would just ruin us both for either of our objectives.”

“It won’t ruin you for my objectives,” said Crystal, “and women are more human, you know, than men.”

Another knock at the door.  Tomes’s voice again: 

“Mr. Verriman wishes to know if he might dine here this evening?”

“No,” said Cord, looking at Crystal.

Crystal raised her voice.  “Certainly, Tomes.  Say we shall be delighted to have him—­at eight.”

Both men turned to her.

“Why did you do that, Crystal?  Verriman—­here—­to-night?”

Crystal did not answer—­the identity of their tones, their words, and their irritation with her should have told them the answer, but didn’t.

She knew that only opposition to Eddie and Eddie’s many prototypes could weld her two men solidly together.

THE END