“They can do what?” she asked tremulously.

His eyes rested gently on her blanched and stricken face.  “Nothing, my dear lady,” he answered, swallowing painfully.  “Nothing that will last.  I am an old man.  I have seen and I have—­I have thought.  And I tell you that only the real survives; evil actions are some phantoms that disappear.  They must not trouble us.”

“That is a high plane,” George intervened, and he spoke without sarcasm.  “To put it roughly, these people have been asking more than the Harman estate is worth; that was on the strength of the woman’s claim as a wife; but now they know she is not one, her position is immensely strengthened, for she has only to go before the nearest Commissaire de Police—­”

“Oh, no!” Mrs. Harman cried passionately.  “I haven’t done that!  You mustn’t tell me I have.  You mustn’t!”

“Never!” he answered.  “There could not be a greater lie than to say you have done it.  The responsibility is with the wretched and vicious boy who brought the catastrophe upon himself.  But don’t you see that you’ve got to keep out of it, that we’ve got to take you out of it?”

“You can’t!  I’m part of it; better or worse, it’s as much mine as his.”

“No, no!” cried Miss Elizabeth.  “You mustn’t tell us that!” Still weeping, she sprang up and threw her arms about her brother.  “It’s too horrible of you—­”

“It is what I must tell you,” Mrs. Harman said.  “My separation from my husband is over.  I shall be with him now for—­”

“I won’t listen to you!” Miss Elizabeth lifted her wet face from George’s shoulder, and there was a note of deep anger in her voice.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about; you haven’t the faintest idea of what a hideous situation that creature has made for himself.  Don’t you know that that awful woman was right, and there are laws in France?  When she finds she can’t get out of him all she wants, do you think she’s going to let him off?  I suppose she struck you as being quite the sort who’d prove nobly magnanimous!  Are you so blind you don’t see exactly what’s going to happen?  She’ll ask twice as much now as she did before; and the moment it’s clear that she isn’t going to get it, she’ll call in an agent of police.  She’ll get her money in a separate suit and send him to prison to do it.  The case against him is positive; there isn’t a shadow of hope for him.  You talk of being with him; don’t you see how preposterous that is?  Do you imagine they encourage family housekeeping in French prisons?”

“Oh, come, this won’t do!” The speaker was Cresson Ingle, who stepped forward, to my surprise; for he had been hovering in the background wearing an expression of thorough discomfort.

“You’re going much too far,” he said, touching his betrothed upon the arm.  “My dear Elizabeth, there is no use exaggerating; the case is unpleasant enough just as it is.”