that we were in earnest. But there
won't be any real love lost."

Westover did not speak. He could not make out whether he was surprised
or whether he was shocked, and it seemed to him that he was neither
surprised nor shocked. He wondered whether he had really expected
something of the kind, sooner or later, or whether he was not always so
apprehensive of some deviltry in Durgin that nothing he did could quite
take him unawares. At last he said: "I suppose it's true--even though
you say it. It's probably the only truth in you."

"That's something like," said Jeff, as if the contempt gave him a sort
of pleasure; and his heavy face lighted up and then darkened again.

"Well," said Westover, "what are we going to do? You've come to tell
me."

"I'm going to break with her. I don't care for her--that!" He snapped
his fingers. "I told her I cared because she provoked me to. It happened
because she wanted it to and led up to it."

"Ah!" said Westover. "You put it on her!" But he waited for Durgin's
justification with a dread that he should find something in it.

"Pshaw! What's the use? It's been a game from the beginning, and a
question which should ruin. I won. She meant to throw me over, if the
time came for her, but it came for me first, and it's only a question
now which shall break first; we've both been near it once or twice
already. I don't mean she shall get the start of me."

Westover had a glimpse of the innate enmity of the sexes in this game;
of its presence in passion that was lived and of its prevalence in
passion that was played. But the fate of neither gambler concerned him;
he was impatient of his interest in what Jeff now went on to tell him,
without scruple concerning her, or palliation of himself. He scarcely
realized that he was listening, but afterward he remembered it all, with
a little pity for Bessie and none for Jeff, but with more shame for her,
too. Love seems more sacredly confided to women than to men; it is and
must be a higher and finer as well as a holier thing with them; their
blame for its betrayal must always be the heavier. He had sometimes
suspected Bessie's willingness to amuse herself with Jeff, as with any
other man who would let her play with him; and he would not have relied
upon anything in him to defeat her purpose, if it had been anything so
serious as a purpose.

At the end of Durgin's story he merely asked: "And what are you going to
do about Cynthia?"

"I am going to