musing, "I wonder--I wonder."

"I'm sure _you_ wouldn't," I protested earnestly, for her.

She looked at me queerly.

"Can I never convince you that I'm just a woman?" said she mockingly. "Just
a woman, and one a man with your ideas of women would fly from."

"I wish you were!" I exclaimed. "Then--I'd not find it so--so impossible to
give you up."

She rose and made a slow tour of the room, halting on the rug before the
closed fireplace a few feet from me. I sat looking at her.

"I am going to give you up," I said at last.

Her eyes, staring into vacancy, grew larger and intenser with each long,
deep breath she took.

"I didn't intend to say what I'm about to say--at least, not this evening,"
I went on, and to me it seemed to be some other than myself who was
speaking. "Certain things happened down town to-day that have set me to
thinking. And--I shall do whatever I can for your brother and your father.
But you--you are free!"

She went to the table, stood there in profile to me, straight and slender
as a sunflower stalk. She traced the silver chasings in the lid of the
cigarette box with her forefinger; then she took a cigarette and began
rolling it slowly and absently.

"Please don't scent and stain your fingers with that filthy tobacco," said
I rather harshly.

"And only this afternoon you were saying you had become reconciled to my
vice--that you had canonized it along with me--wasn't that your phrase?"
This indifferently, without turning toward me, and as if she were thinking
of something else.

"So I have," retorted I. "But my mood--please oblige me this once."

She let the cigarette fall into the box, closed the lid gently, leaned
against the table, folded her arms upon her bosom and looked full at me.
I was as acutely conscious of her every movement, of the very coming and
going of the breath at her nostrils, as a man on the operating-table is
conscious of the slightest gesture of the surgeon.

"You are--suffering!" she said, and her voice was like the flow of oil upon
a burn. "I have never seen you like this. I didn't believe you capable
of--of much feeling."

I could not trust myself to speak. If Bob Corey could have looked in on
that scene, could have understood it, how amazed he would have been!

"What happened down town to-day?" she went on. "Tell me, if I may know."

"I'll tell you what I didn't think, ten minutes ago, I'd tell any human
being," said I. "They've got me strapped down in