“Cathewe knows,” moodily.

“I had forgotten!”

“I leave all in your hands.  Do what you will.  If you break me—­and God knows well that you can do it—­it would be only an act of justice.  I have been a damned scoundrel; I am man enough to admit of that.”

She saw his face more clearly now.  Time had marked it.  There were new lines at the corners of his eyes and the cheek-bones were more prominent.  Perhaps he had suffered too.  “You will always have the courage to do,” she said, “right or wrong in a great manner.”

“Am I wrong to seek—­”

“Hush!  I know.  It is what you must thrust aside or break to reach it, Karl.  The thing itself is not wrong, but you will go about it wrongly.  You can not help that.”

He did not reply.  Perhaps she was right.  Indeed, was she not herself an example of it?  If there was one thing in his complex career that he regretted more than another it was the deception of this woman.  He did not possess the usual vanity of the sex; there was nothing here to be proud of; his dream of conquest was not over the kingdom of women.

“Some one is coming,” he said, listening.

“Leave it all to me.”

“Ah! . . .” with a hand toward her.

“Do not say it.  I understand the thought.  If only you loved me, you would say!” the iron in her voice unmistakable.

He let his hand fall.  He was sorry.

Presently the others made their entrance upon the scene, a singular anticlimax.  The admiral rang for the cocktails.  Introductions followed.

“Is it not strange?” said the singer to Laura.  “I stole in here to look at the trophies, when I discovered Mr. Breitmann whom I once knew in Munich.”

“Mr. Cathewe,” said the young hostess, “this is Mr. Breitmann, who is aiding father in the compilation of his book.”

“Mr. Breitmann and I have met before,” said Cathewe soberly.

The two men bowed.  Cathewe never gave his hand to any but his intimates.  But Laura, who was not aware of this ancient reserve, thought that both of them showed a lack of warmth.  And Fitzgerald, who was watching all comers now, was sure that the past of his friend and Breitmann interlaced in some way.

“So, young man,” said Mrs. Coldfield, a handsome motherly woman, “you have had the impudence to let five years pass without darkening my doors.  What excuse have you?”

“I’m guilty of anything you say,” Fitzgerald answered humbly.  “What shall be my punishment?”

“You shall take Miss Laura in and I shall sit at your left.”

“For my sins it shall be as you say.  But, really, I have been so little in New York,” he added.

“I forgive you simply because you have not made a failure of your mother’s son.  And you look like her, too.”  It is one of the privileges of old persons to compare the young with this or that parent.