With him was Norvil Thayre. For such a development Paul Burton found himself totally unprepared. No ready phrases came to his lips and his sudden pallor was a seeming confession of guilt. The husband stood for a moment in the door and his face, too, paled, but that was only momentary. At once it became fixed in a resolute determination to remain expressionless. The alert mind of Thayre, grasping the situation, addressed itself to averting its awkwardness with artless and inconsequential small talk. He came over to the table and shook hands, while Len Haswell stood at his elbow, saying nothing. Paul instinctively offered his hand, but Len ignored it. He heard Loraine declaring with a charmingly assumed innocence, "Chance brings us into quite a little party. First I happen on Mr. Burton, then on you two."
Suddenly an idea of escape struck Paul, as it had struck him at the school. He, too, laughed, turning to Loraine. "And since you are in better hands, I'll run along. I have an appointment at a studio on the square."
Len Haswell favored him with a satirical glance. "You seem," he suggested coolly, "to be only beginning your meal. We are here on business, and won't interrupt." The big man turned on his heel, and, followed by his companion, went into the adjoining dining-room. Loraine Haswell laughed nervously, but Paul's face clouded with deep anxiety.
After he had put Loraine into a taxi' the cloud deepened. The same self-accusations that had tortured his childhood with the suffering of self-contempt after each act of cowardice had him again by the throat. Never had it been his plan to urge this woman toward divorce. He had simply drifted with pleasant tides and now he found himself washed seaward with a dragging anchor. It was small compensation to reflect that his fault was less vicious than craven.
The square was bathed in a radiance of frosty sunlight, and the buildings at the south stood diamond-clear under a flawless sky. The monument to the man whose courage and decision had cradled a nation's birth gleamed in its granite whiteness. But Paul Burton felt small, afraid and besmirched of soul. He hurried to his own house and shut himself in with a thousand weak misgivings, until finally an idea formulated itself. He would go to Hamilton for counsel and strength.