"See here—give me that glove," Vance burst out; then crimsoned at his blunder. Mrs. Tracy tucked the bag under her arm. "I'll see to returning it," she said.

He affected indifference. "Oh, very well—" There was a pause, and then he added. "If that's all, I'll be off."

Mrs. Tracy, however, continued to oppose him from the threshold. "It's not all—nothing like. I guess it's for me to decide about that."

Vance waited a moment: angry as he was, he had the sense to want to check Mrs. Tracy's recriminations. "If there's anything else to be said, I guess it's for Laura Lou to say it. I'm going back home now to give her the chance," he declared.

Mrs. Tracy raised her hand in agitation. "No, Vance—no! You won't do that. The letter's half killed her, anyway. And you know she can't stand anything that excites and worries her… ." She paused a moment, and added with a certain dignity: "That's why I came here—it was to spare her."

Vance pondered. "Was it her idea that you should come?"

"No, she doesn't even know I'm here. I told her we'd have to take steps to find out—but she was so upset she wouldn't listen. My child's a nervous wreck, Vance. That's what you've made of her."

"If I've made her a nervous wreck, is it your idea that it's going to quiet her if you go back and report—as you apparently mean to do—that I come here to meet other women?"

The reasoning of this was a little too close for Mrs. Tracy's flurried brain. She considered it for a while, and then said: "I didn't come here to go back and report to her."

Vance looked at her in astonishment. "Then what on earth did you come for? Your imagination is so worked up against me that all my denials wouldn't convince you—I see that. But if Laura Lou's to be left out of the question—"

His mother-in-law moved nearer to him, with a look of appeal in her face that made it human again. "It all depends on you, Vance."

"Well, you don't suppose—"