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“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.”

She paused for breath, then turned slowly to Brainard with a note of pathos in her voice.

“Our temperaments may have been different, Rodman. They were not when we were poor. Perhaps I have not developed with you, the way you want of me. But, Rodman, did you ever stop to think that perhaps, perhaps if I had ever had the chance to be taken into your confidence more often–“

“Will you–forgive me?” Brainard managed to blurt out.

“Will you forgive me?” she returned frankly.

“I–forgive? I have nothing to forgive.”

“I could have understood, Rodman, if it had been Miss Dunlap. She is clever, wonderful. But that Leblanc–never!”

Sybil Brainard turned to Constance.

“Miss Dunlap–Mrs. Dunlap,” she sobbed, “forgive me. You–you are a better woman than I am.”