"You said you loved me. Is it true?"
He answered firmly:
"Yes, I do."
"Then will you marry me? This woman will only wreck your life. Choose between us."
He turned in desperation to Mrs. Norton.
"Violet, you don't really want me, do you? You don't love me. I've felt for a long time that you're forgetting me. I love Muriel and she loves me. If you ever cared for me release me from my promise."
Mrs. Norton lay back calmly in her chair and looked with a smile from one to the other. Then she said deliberately:
"This morning I wrote to my husband and told him that I was never returning to him, that I was going to you, Frank. That is why I asked this girl here to-day to tell you before her that now I'm going to ask you to keep your promise. Will you?"
The girl looked at him appealingly and stretched out her hands to him.
"Frank, for your own sake, if not for mine, don't listen to her."