“You can’t prove it,” shouted a voice through the black disc at her ear.  She was startled.  It was the voice of Worthington.

“Miss Dunlap—­have you that notebook?” came the deep tones of her husband.

Constance read from her first notes that part relating to the conspiracy to control Motors, carefully omitting the part about the Leblanc letters.

“It’s a lie—­a lie.”

“No, it is not a lie.  It is all good legal evidence, the record taken over the new microphone detective.  Look up there over the chandelier, Worthington.  The other end is In the top drawer of Miss Dunlap’s desk.”

“I’ll fight that to a finish, Brainard.  You are clever but there are other things besides Motors that you have to answer for.”

“No.  Those letters—­that is what you mean—­are in my possession now.  You didn’t know that?  All the eavesdropping, if you choose to call it that, was not done here, either, by a long shot, Worthington.  I had one of these machines in my wife’s reception room.  I have all sorts of little scraps of conversation,” he boasted.  “I also have an account of a visit there from two—­er—­scoundrels—­”

“Mrs. Brainard to see you, sir,” announced a boy at the door.

Constance had risen.  Her face was flushed and her breast rose and fell with excitement.

“Mr. Brainard,” she interrupted.  “I must explain—­confess.  Mrs. Brainard has been sitting in my office listening to us over the microphone.  I arranged it.  I asked her to come down, using another name as a pretext.  But I didn’t think she would interrupt so soon.  Before you see her—­let me read this.  It was a conversation I got after you had left last night and so far I have had no chance to tell you of it.  Some one,” she laid particular stress on the word, “came back after that first interview.  Listen.”

“No, Lee,” Constance read rapidly from her notes, “no.  Don’t think I am ungrateful.  You have been one friend in a thousand through all this.  I shall have my decree-soon, now.  Don’t spoil it-”

“But Sybil, think of Mm.  What did he ever care for you!  He has made you free already.”

“He is still my husband.”

“Take this latest escapade with this Miss Dunlap.”

“Well, what do I really know about that?”

“You saw him.”

“Yes, but maybe it was as he said.”

The door was flung open, interrupting Constance’s reading, and Sybil Brainard entered.  The artificiality of the beauty parlor was all gone.  She was a woman, who had been wronged and deceived.

“Next friend—­a true next friend—­fiend would be better, Lee Worthington,” she scorned.  “How can you stand there and look me in the face, how could you tell me of your love for me, when all the time you cared no more for me or for any other woman than for that—­ that Leblanc!  You knew that I, who was as jealous as I could be of Rodman, had heard a little—­you added more.  Yet when you had played on my feelings, you would have cast me off, too—­I know it; I know your kind.”