With a supreme effort at self-control Gordon clutched the rim of the table with both hands. In a red mist the room swam before his eyes. Then, all at once, together his vision and his brain suddenly cleared. He raised his right hand and pointed to the door.
"You'd better go," he said, in a perfectly even tone. "You've gone too far. I'll never own you as my wife again."
She did not flinch. Her eye met his with a passion less restrained, but the equal of his own. "No," she blazed, in sudden wrath, "you won't. You never spoke a truer word. Perhaps—"
She stopped abruptly, then silently turned and swept from the room.
It was not until Sunday night that Gordon's third caller came. Doyle, hurrying post-haste from the West, consumed with anxiety, his fears increasing with every bulletin received on the way, burst into Gordon's study, travel-stained and weary, to find his chief sitting calmly in his easy chair, the long table in front of him, usually covered inches deep with papers, cleared bare, with the exception of two sheets, one a letter, one a memorandum covered with minute figures. Gordon nodded pleasantly.
"Well," he said, "glad you're back. You've missed all the excitement. We've been making history since you left. All sorts, too."
He pushed the letter across the table. Mechanically Doyle took it, and read the few brief lines through. Then he looked up with a gasp.
"Is it true?" he exclaimed. "She's really gone?" Gordon nodded. "Quick work, wasn't it?" he said pleasantly. "She could have had a divorce, if she'd waited; but she was in a hurry, it seems. So they're off on a three years' tour of the world on Ogden's steam yacht. Quite romantic, isn't it?"
Doyle shook his head in mute sympathy. "I'm awfully sorry—" he began, but Gordon, with a strange laugh, cut him short.
"Needn't be," he said. "You don't know the humorous side yet. When you do, you'll laugh, too. It's really funny."