“You mean—­let me quite understand you, Elisabeth”—­Trent spoke with curious precision—­“that I am to blacken myself in Sara’s eyes, so that, discovering what a wolf in sheep’s clothing I am, she will break off our engagement.  That, I take it, is your suggestion?”

Beneath his searching glance she faltered a moment.  Then—­

“Yes,” she answered boldly.  “That is it.”

“It’s a charming programme,” he commented.  “But it doesn’t seem to me that you have considered Sara at all in the matter.  It will hardly add to her happiness to find that she has given her heart to—­what shall we say?”—­smiling disagreeably—­“to the wrong kind of man?”

“Of, of course, she will be upset, disillusionnee, for a time.  She will suffer.  But then we all have our share of suffering.  Sara cannot hope to be exempt.  And afterwards—­afterwards”—­her eyes shining—­“she will be happy.  She and Tim will be happy together.”

“And so you are prepared to cause all this suffering, Sara’s and mine—­though I suppose”—­with a bitter inflection—­“that last hardly counts with you!—­in order to secure Tim’s happiness?”

“Yes,” significantly, “I am prepared—­to do anything to secure that.”

Trent stared at her in blank amazement.

“Have you no conscience?” he asked at last.  “Have you never had any?”

She looked at him a little piteously.

“You don’t understand,” she muttered.  “You don’t understand.  I’m his mother.  And I want him to be happy.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I am sorry,” he said, “that I cannot help you.  But I’m afraid Tim’s happiness isn’t going to be purchased at my expense.  I haven’t the least intention of blackening myself in the eyes of the woman I love for the sake of Tim—­or of twenty Tims.  Please understand that, once and for all.”

He gestured as though to indicated that she should precede him to the window by which she had entered.  But she made no movement to go.  Instead she flung back her cloak as though it were stifling her, and caught him impetuously by the arm.

“Maurice!  Maurice!  For God’s sake, listen to me!” Her voice was suddenly shaken with passionate entreaty.  “Use some other method, then!  Break with her some other way!  If you only knew how I hate to ask you this—­I who have already brought only sorrow and trouble into your life!  But Tim—­my son—­he must come first!” She pressed a little closer to him, lifting her face imploringly.  “Maurice, you loved me once—­for the sake of that love, grant me my boy’s happiness!”

Quietly, inexorably, he disengaged himself from the eager clasp of her hand.  Her beautiful, agonized face, the vehement supplication of her voice, moved him not a jot.

“You are making a poor argument,” he said coldly.  “You are making your request in the name of a love that died three-and-twenty years ago.”

“Do you mean”—­she stared at him—­“that you have not cared—­at all—­since?” She spoke incredulously.  Then, suddenly, she laughed.  “And I—­what a fool I was!—­I used to grieve—­often—­thinking how you must be suffering!”