“Hush, darling,” Miriam whispered back.  “You’ll tell me about it as we go home.”

But in the motor Evie could only cry, clinging to Miriam as she used to do in troubled moments in childhood.  Arrived at the apartment, Wayne had to be faced with some measure of self-control, and then came dinner.  At table Evie, outwardly mistress of herself by this time, talked feverish nonsense about their common friends in Lenox, after which she made an excuse for retiring early.  It was only in the bedroom, when they were secure from interruption that Miriam heard what Evie had to tell.  She was tearless now, and rather indignant.

“I’ve had the strangest letter from Herbert,” she declared excitedly, as soon as Miriam entered the room.  “I couldn’t have believed he wrote it in his senses if Aunt Queenie hadn’t heard the Same thing from Uncle Jarrott.  He says he’s got to go to—­jail.”

There was the same rising inflexion on the last word, suggestive of a shriek of horror, that Miriam had noticed in the station.  In her white peignoir, her golden hair streaming over her shoulders, and her hands flung wide apart with an appealing dramatic gesture, Evie was not unlike some vision of a youthful Christian martyr, in spite of the hair-brush in her hand.  Miriam sat down sidewise on the edge of the couch, looking up at the child in pity.  She felt that it was useless to let her remain in darkness any longer.

“Of course he has to,” she said, trying to make her tone as matter of fact as might be.  “Didn’t you know it?”

“Know it!  Did you?”

Evie stepped forward, bending over Miriam as if she meant to strike her.

“I knew it in a general way, darling.  I suppose, when he gives himself to the police—­”

“The police!” Evie screamed.  “Am I to be engaged to a man who—­gives himself up to the police?”

“It will only be for a little while, dear—­”

“I don’t care whether it’s for a little while or foreverit can’t be.  What is he thinking of?  What are you thinking of?  Don’t you see?  How can I face the world—­with all my invitations—­when the man I’m engaged to is—­in jail?”

Evie’s hands flew up in a still more eloquent gesture, while the blue eyes, usually so soft and veiled, were wide with flaming interrogation.

“I knew that—­in some ways—­it might be hard for you—­”

Evie laughed, a little silvery mirthless ripple of scorn.

“I must say, Miriam, you choose your words skilfully.  But you’re wrong, do you see?  There’s no way in which it can be hard for me, because there’s no way in which it’s possible.”

“Oh yes, there is, dear—­if you love him.”

“That has nothing to do with it.  Of course I love him.  Haven’t I said so?  But that doesn’t make any difference.  Can’t I love him without being engaged to—­to—­to a man who has to go to jail?”

“Certainly; but you can’t love him if you don’t feel that you must—­that you simply must—­stand by his side.”