"That's what you used to say about your family when you were a kid. No doubt Pat would be sorry if you died. But wouldn't you be sorry—when you'd divorced him?"
"I don't care whether I'm sorry or not," cried Juliet. "I'm too miserable now to care about how I may feel then."
"That's the state of mind for jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire," said Jack. "Listen, my kid, did you come here to me to ask my advice?"
"Yes, partly. Though I wouldn't promise to take it if it was anything I didn't like. But mostly I came for something else."
"What?"
"To beg you to help me. Help's better than advice."
"You ought to know I'll help you, in any way I jolly well can——"
"In any way?" she caught him up.
Jack was slightly startled, knowing Juliet as he did know her: impulsive, even unscrupulous, if a thing passionately wished for were to be obtained—like all spoiled young women, to whom life has refused nothing. "Why not out with it at once, and not beat round the bush?" he asked. "You've some special thing in your mind——"
"I have," she cut him short. "But, truly, Jack, I hadn't when I came. I was just going to ask for your advice and help, mixed up together. You were to advise me what to do; and then if I wanted to do it, you were to help get it done. I've no one except you to depend on, and you were my only hope—if I had any hope left—of making things somehow work out right in the end. It's you yourself who has given me the real idea—the inspiration: the thing to be done. And if you are the one person on earth who can do it, the question is—will you?"