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A minute passed. Neither spoke. Then, with a shade of annoyance, the man shifted in his chair.

“I thought, perhaps, you’d have something you wished to say. If not, however–” He paused meaningly.

“You said a moment ago, you wished to speak to me.”

“As usual, you make everything as difficult as possible.” The shade of annoyance became positive. “Such being the case, we may as well come to the point. How soon do you contemplate bringing this–this incident to a close?”

“The answer to that question concerns me alone.”

An ordinary man would have laughed; but Asa Arnold was not an ordinary man–not at this time.

“As your husband, I can’t agree with you.”

Camilla Maurice took up his words, quickly.

“You mistake. You’re the husband of Eleanor Owen. I’m not she.”

The man went on calmly, as though there had been no interruption.

“I don’t want to be hard on you, Eleanor. I don’t think I have been hard on you. A year has passed, and I’ve known you were here from the first day. But this sort of thing can’t go on indefinitely; there’s a limit, even to good nature. I ask you again, when are you coming back?”

The woman looked at her companion, for the first time steadily. Even she, who knew him so well, felt a shade of wonder at the man who could adjust all the affairs of his life in the same voice with which he ordered his dinner. Before, she had always thought this attitude of his pure affectation. Now she knew better, knew it mirrored the man himself. He had done this thing. Knowing her whereabouts all the time, he had allotted her the past year, as an employer would grant a holiday to an assistant. Now he asked her to return to the old life, as calmly as one returns in the fall to the city home after an outing! Only one man in the world could have done that thing, and that man was before her–her husband by law–Asa Arnold!

The wonder of it all crept into her voice.

“I’m not coming back, can’t you understand? I’m never coming back,” she repeated.

The man arose and stood in the doorway.

“Don’t say that,” he said very quietly. “Not yet. I won’t begin, now, after all these years to make protestations of love. The thing called Love we’ve discussed too often already, and without result. Anyway, that’s not the point. We never pretended to be lovers, even when we were married. We were simply useful, very useful to each other.”

Camilla started to interrupt him, but, preventing, he held up his hand.

“We talked over a certain possibility–one now a reality–before we were married.” He caught the look upon her face. “I don’t say it was ideal. It simply was,” he digressed slowly in answer, then hurried on: “That was only five years ago, Eleanor, and we were far from young.” He looked at her, searchingly. “You’ve not forgotten the contract we drew up, that stood above the marriage obligation, above everything, supreme law for you and me?” Instinctively his hand went to an inner pocket, where the rustle of a paper answered his touch. “Remember; it’s not a favor I ask of you, but the fulfilment of your own word. Think a moment before you say you’ll never return.”

Camilla Maurice found an answer very difficult. Had he been angry, or abusive, it would have been easy; but as it was–

“You overlook the fact of change. A lifetime isn’t required for that.”

“I overlook nothing.” The man went back to his chair. “You remember, as well as I, that we considered the problem of change–and laughed at it. I repeat, we’re no longer in swaddling clothes.”

“Be that as it may, I tell you the whole world looks different to me now.” The speaker struggled bravely, but the ghastliness of such a discussion wore on her nerves, and her face twitched. “No power on earth could make me keep that contract since I’ve changed.”