“Because I cannot help it——”

“A lover should be blind,” she put in.

“Like a husband?” he asked, significantly.

“Like a wife,” she corrected, soberly.

He followed her indoors, where Aurora met them at the door of the library.

“Tea, Aurora,” she announced. “Will you pour it? Mort and I will be in in a moment.”

She hovered in the doorway insistently until she saw DeLaunay safely seated on the davenport at the tea-table by Aurora’s side, and only then she departed in the direction of the smoking room.

Mortimer Crabb was drinking a glass of whiskey and water. At the sound of his wife’s voice he turned.

“Did you get it, Mort?” she asked.