about her charge. "I do not know," she admitted, her voice low. Adriance drew a quick breath. "That isn't all of it. The husband is the man's friend. Why, they used to sleep together, eat together----! And he doesn't know. Don't you see, the man has to fail either the husband or wife? How can you straighten that?" She looked up, to meet the unconscious self-betrayal of his defiant, unhappy eyes. "I am very sorry for him," she answered gravely. And, after a moment. "She must be very clever." He started away from the suggestion with sharp resentment. Clever--that was his father's term for Lucille Masterson; and it was hateful to him. He would not analyze why he felt that repugnance to hearing Lucille called clever. He refused to consider what that implied, what ugly depths of doubt were stirred in him to make him wince in anger and humiliation. Suddenly he bitterly regretted having told the story to this girl, even under the concealed identity. "No doubt," he made a coldly vague rejoinder. "I dare say the matter will work itself out well enough. It is getting late; I think I must go." It was altogether too abrupt, and he knew it. But he could do no better. He knew the girl's eyes followed him away, and he walked with careful ease and nonchalance. Out of her sight, he walked more slowly. Already the autumn twilight was settling down like a delicate gray veil. At the foot of the Palisades, opposite, a familiar point of light sprang into view among the myriad lights there; a point that ran like fire through tow, up, across, around until the glittering words shone complete: "Adriance's Paper." The name was reflected in the dark water. Down there, it swayed weakly and its legend was broken by the river's ripples. "You shine, up there, but I govern here," the Hudson flung its scorn back to the man-made arrogance. He was like that reflection, Tony Adriance thought, with a fancy caught from the girl's trick of imagery; he was the mere reflection of his father's successes, shifting, worthless, inseparable from the gold-colored reality above, dancing and broken on the current of a woman's will. He himself was--nothing. He winced under the self-applied lash. It was knotted with truth; he, personally, never had counted. Even Lucille never had said she loved him; she simply had taken his devotion for granted, and used it. Would she have promised herself to him if he had been a poor man? Would she ever have contemplated divorce from Masterson, with all his faults, if Tony Adriance had not brought himself and his gilded possibilities across her path? The questions were ugly, and sent the blood into his face. He stopped walking and stood by the stone wall edging the sidewalk, facing the river. He always had resented being merely his father's heir, in a vague, 

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