abroad Mary Burton faced the sternest dilemma which had ever presented
itself for her decision. The mother refused absolutely to obey the
verdict unless her daughter accompanied her, and while Mary was abroad
she could only guess what crises her lover might be meeting at
home--because he was her lover.

She and Edwardes were walking together one afternoon as they discussed
this new complication in their affairs. They had chosen for their tryst
neither the smooth stretch of the avenue nor the paths of the park, but
those tangled by-ways that thread the woods back of the Jersey
Palisades.

It was a cold day with air as biting as a lash and as clear as crystal,
and since these woods were wild and desolate in spots though skirted by
smooth road-ways and flanked by handsome estates they had for the most
part uninterrupted solitude. Ragged outcroppings of rock stood baldly
etched against the brilliant sky and through the open spaces they
occasionally saw the Hudson and the contour of upper New York. Twice
they came upon rouged and powdered men and women with beaded lashes, but
these men and women were too busy doing varied things before cameras to
take notice of them, for their refuge was also the open-air workshop of
moving-picture folk.

"Of course you must go," Edwardes seriously told her. "Your mother's
health--her life itself--may depend on it. You aren't the sort who can
hesitate to answer such a call and it won't be forever, you know."

"And while I'm--over there--with an ocean between us"--she broke off and
her eyes darkened with terror--"you may be facing a decisive battle
here--a battle decisive for both of us. If you have to fight, it's my