Her father, who was one of the most high-minded inventors of civic duties, who believed that both matrimonial and electric-lighting contracts were drawn up in Heaven, was nevertheless urging her to leave her wedded husband, come home, and be divorced. Then she would again be able to go, panoplied in Caucasian superiority, to evening carnivals where you ate lobster Newburg and played “Who am I?” If it did not work out, he promised, he would send her off to live in some scenic locality where the taint in Biddy was unknown.

When she dropped in to see her father, he looked up from his desk as though the desk itself were looking up, and said steadily, “Why duck your fate, Vessy? I have talked it over with your Uncle Oliver and with Reverend Yarrow, than whom there are no greater believers in the sanctity of marriage—when it’s a real marriage. But they agree with me that you cannot look at it as a genuine bond when you were betrayed into wedlock with a homicidal maniac, a degenerate, or a Negro, and when a man is more or less all three–-We don’t want a divorce from this fella Kingsblood; we want an annulment.”

“Nuts.”

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘Nuts.’”

“Do you think that’s respectful?”

“I’m extremely fond of Neil. He’s good fun—or he used to be, before he became a mass-meeting. Besides, I don’t want to let him down.”

“You’re letting me down, aren’t you?”

“Could be.”

“Then you certainly can’t expect me–-”

“We don’t. We won’t. We won’t take another cent from you. Besides, Neil has the refusal of the most wonderful position in–-I won’t tell you anything about it, till it’s made public. Oh, Dad, you don’t want to persecute me, do you?”

“No, I want to save you.”

Repeat.

* * * * *

Elegant Eliot Hansen, whatever he might think of Neil Kingsblood, that traitor to his class and race, made it clear to Neil’s wife that he, Eliot, was merely the more loyal to her, and that he stood humbly ready to serve her with advice, sympathy, petty cash, discussion of the opera, brotherly handshakes, or anything of his that she could use. That resourceful willingness, combined with Eliot’s fresh, thin good looks and his habit of tilting his head at her like a worshipping dachshund, made him a more dangerous escape for Vestal than you would have thought.