"He _must_ sign!"

Larssen rushed back to his desk and scribbled on a sheet of paper: "Until May 3rd, I fix up nothing with the underwriters."

He scrawled his signature under it, and without further word hurried from the throne-room.

Matheson and his wife were left alone.

When Larssen had closed the door behind him, Olive felt as if a big strong arm of support had suddenly been taken away from her. Larssen's mere presence, even if he remained silent, gave her a fict.i.tious sense of her own power, which now was crumbling away and leaving her with a feeling of insecurity and self-distrust.

Openly it expressed itself in peevish annoyance.

"Why couldn't you have stayed away altogether?" she muttered fretfully.

"n.o.body wanted you back. Your scruples, indeed! I must say you have a pretty mixed set of them. If you had had any consideration for me, you'd have stayed away altogether, instead of coming back and making scenes of this kind. I hate scenes! And why did you force that month's wait at the last moment? Now things are complicated worse than ever!"

Matheson waited patiently for his wife to finish the recital of her complaints. He wondered if it were possible to appeal once more to her better feelings. At all events he would make the attempt. The signature he had forced out of Larssen had given him back some of his self-respect, and he felt his brain as it were cleared for action once more.

When Olive had finished, Matheson asked her quietly: "Why did you marry me?"

"Why did you marry _me_?" she retorted.

"Because I honestly believed at the time that I loved you."

"I suppose you found out afterwards that you'd made a mistake, and then blamed it on to me?"

"I'm not blaming you--I'm trying to get the right perspective on to our marriage. I'm wondering if the woman I loved was yourself, or merely my idealization of you."

"I can't help it if I'm not the incarnation of all the virtues you imagined me to be!" Olive sat down and played nervously with a penholder, jabbing meaningless lines and dots on to a loose sheet of paper.

"When I married you, I thought you were in sympathy with me over the big things of life--the things that matter. But you turned them aside with a laugh. That put a barrier between us."

"I never could stand prigs. I thought I was marrying a man of the world."

"We seemed to be radically opposed in ideas. We drifted farther and farther away from one another. At the end of five years, our marriage was empty even of tepid affection. If there had been children, perhaps...."

"No doubt you'd have wanted to wheel them out in the perambulator!"

Matheson let the flippancy pa.s.s. He continued steadily: "I felt I could not do my big work under the constant friction of our married life, and my life in the financial world. I felt you longed for complete liberty."

"I did, and I do so still."

"So, when opportunity came to me on the night of March 14th, I made the sudden decision you know of. I thought I had cut myself loose. If it had not been for that one unthought-of thread--Larssen's scheme to use me dead or alive--I should never have come back.... My sudden decision was wrong. I realise now that no man can cut himself utterly loose from the life he has woven for himself. He is part of the pattern of the great web of humanity. He is joined to the world around him by a thousand threads. If he tries to cut loose, there will always be some one unnoticed thread linking him to the old life."

"That sort of thing may be interesting to people who're interested in it. It merely bores me."

"Olive, I want to say this: I'm ready to try once more. I'm ready to take up our married life as we started it on our wedding day. I'll try to forget the past and start afresh. I'll make allowances for you--will _you_ make allowances for me?"

Olive laughed mirthlessly. "In plain words, that means you want me to be somebody I've never pretended to be and never want to be. The idea is fatuous."

"Won't you believe me when I say that I'm genuinely anxious to do the right thing by you, and clear up the tangle I've made of your life and mine? I'm sorry for what I said in Larssen's presence a little while ago. I was angry and carried beyond myself."

"No apology can wipe out that sort of thing."

"I'll do my best to make amends.... You're not looking at all well.

There's a big change in you. Monte Carlo does you no good--the reverse in fact. Why not see a doctor and get him to prescribe you a tonic and a quiet place to build up your health in? We'll go there together and start our married life afresh."

"You've had your say--now let me have mine!" flung out Olive. "When we married, I was mistaken too. I thought at the time you were a man who could do things. I judged on your previous career. After we were married, I found I was utterly misled. It isn't in you to climb to the top. You've too many sides to your nature. First one thing pulls you one way, and then another thing pulls you another way. To succeed, a man has to run in blinkers--straight on without minding the side issues. I imagined you a hundred per center, and I found you only a ninety per center. You can't climb to the top--it isn't in you!"

"Climb to where?"

Olive looked around at the vast throne-room of the shipowner, and her meaning was conveyed in the glance.

"Larssen has that final ten per cent.," admitted Matheson. "But do you know what it means in plain language?"

"What?"

"Utter unscrupulousness. Utter ruthlessness. Napoleon had that extra ten per cent. Bismarck had it. You're right when you say I haven't it."

Olive moved irritably in her chair. "Sour grapes," she commented.

"Call it that if you wish."

She dug her pen viciously into the polished surface of the desk, leaving the holder quivering at the outrage.

"Larssen has been merely playing with you," continued Matheson. "I don't want to blame, but to warn. I know the man far better than you do. He thinks you might be useful to him."

"What are you going to do when the month is up?" she asked abruptly.

"What do you want me to do?"

She looked him straight in the eye, her pupils narrowed with hate. "Go out of my life!"

"A legal separation?"

"No use at all. That ties me indefinitely."

"What then?"

"One of two things: divorce or disappearance."

"You mean a framed-up divorce? The usual arranged affair?"

"No, I don't. I mean a divorce with that Verney woman as co-respondent."

"I'll not have you insult her by calling her 'that Verney woman!'"

"Miss Verney, then.... It's either divorce or total disappearance."

"Larssen spoke glibly enough of disappearance, but the circ.u.mstances are very different now from what they were on the night of March 14th.