Page:The council of seven.djvu/195

 no matter there it is. I'll go and telephone to them now."

His own will had steeled hers for the task. So be it! Let the die be cast! But as he sat at the restaurant table, looking all the facts in the face, the oppression upon his heart was almost more than he could bear.

Storm clouds lowered on every hand, heavy with menace. The future was dark to the verge of the terrible.

As Helen returned, that virile figure, so strong, so sane, so alive with courage and capacity braced him for his own great throw.

"You've cut the painter?"

"Yes," she said in a low voice.

"Well now, my darling," he said with the odd tenderness which always made him so hard to resist, "we stand together or we fall. Let us get married at once with the least possible fuss."

She did not yield at once. Elementally she was very feminine. Besides, there were strong arguments to bring against unseemly haste. It would be a bitter blow to John's mother who had quite other views for her ewe lamb. And what, pray, had they to set up house-*keeping upon, now that Helen had just cast away her princely thousand dollars a month?

John, however, had given thought to all that. The old lady, with Helen's consent, should stay on at Wyndham where things might remain exactly as they were