“It would be cruel to tell her.”

“You’ve got to be cruel to be kind, sometimes,” he said oracularly.  “Why, the man may be married.  May be anything.  A taxi driver!  Doesn’t that in itself show that he’s hiding from something?”

She sat, a small obese figure made larger by her furs, and stared at him with troubled eyes.

“I don’t know, Wallie,” she said helplessly.  “In a way, it might be better to tell her.  She could put him out of her mind, then.  But I hate to do it.  It’s like stabbing a baby.”

He understood her, and nodded.  When, after taking a turn or two about the room he again stopped in front of her his angry flush had subsided.

“It’s the devil of a mess,” he commented.  “I suppose the square thing to do is to tell Doctor David, and let him decide.  I’ve got too much at stake to be a judge of what to do.”

He went upstairs soon after that, leaving her still in her chair, swathed in furs, her round anxious face bent forward in thought.  He had rarely seen her so troubled, so uncertain of her next move, and he surmised, knowing her, that her emotions were a complex of anxiety for himself with Elizabeth, of pity for David, and of the memory of Dick Livingstone’s haggard face.

She sat alone for some time and then went reluctantly up the stairs to her bedroom.  She felt, like Wallie, that she had too much at stake to decide easily what to do.

In the end she decided to ask Doctor Reynolds’ advice, and in the morning she proceeded to do it.  Reynolds was interested, even a little excited, she thought, but he thought it better not to tell David.  He would himself go to Harrison Miller with it.

“You say he knew you?” he inquired, watching her.  “I suppose there is no doubt of that?”

“Certainly not.  He’s known me for years.  And he asked about David.”

“I see.”  He fell into profound thought, while she sat in her chair a trifle annoyed with him.  He was wondering how all this would affect him and his prospects, and through them his right to marry.  He had walked into a good thing, and into a very considerable content.

“I see,” he repeated, and got up.  “I’ll tell Miller, and we’ll get to work.  We are all very grateful to you, Mrs. Sayre—­”

As a result of that visit Harrison Miller and Bassett went that night to Chicago.  They left it to Doctor Reynolds’ medical judgment whether David should be told or not, and Reynolds himself did not know.  In the end he passed the shuttle the next evening to Clare Rossiter.

“Something’s troubling you,” she said.  “You’re not a bit like yourself, old dear.”

He looked at her.  To him she was all that was fine and good and sane of judgment.

“I’ve got something to settle,” he said.  “I was wondering while you were singing, dear, whether you could help me out.”

“When I sing you’re supposed to listen.  Well?  What is it?” She perched herself on the arm of his chair, and ran her fingers over his hair.  She was very fond of him, and she meant to be a good wife.  If she ever thought of Dick Livingstone now it was in connection with her own reckless confession to Elizabeth.  She had hated Elizabeth ever since.