I, on the contrary, knew that sleeplessness had left me
haggard, and met his advances, I fear, with churlish taciturnity.

In the smoking compartment, when we were under way, I sat gazing out of
the car window at fleeting fields still a-sparkle with frost crystals on
wood and stubble.

"You and Frances didn't just seem to hit it off," commented my companion
with a proffer of his cigar-case, "or rather Frances liked you all
right, but you--" He broke off with an amused smile and busied himself
with the kindling of a panatella.

A man can hardly explain to his fellow-man, "I was rude to your wife
because I love her. I worship her in a way your prosaic little soul can
never understand. It is only because civilization is all distorted that
I don't murder you and carry her off in triumph to my cave--where she
belongs."

So I mumbled some foolish contradiction. I thought her charming; I was
merely not a woman's man. I was still part savage. My unfortunate
temperament must be my apology.

Weighborne studied me for a moment in some perplexity. He knew I was
lying, but he had no suspicion why I lied and he could hardly argue in
her defense with me, a stranger. He changed the topic, but there was a
hurt expression in his face as though he were unable to understand my
subtle hostility, as he construed it, for a person entirely lovely. If I
did not like Frances there must be something abnormal about me, and the
expression was quite eloquent though wordless. I had no difficulty in
reading it. It was as though he wanted to say to me and was saying to
himself, "After all, our relations are those of business, and your
personal preferences and prejudices do not concern me, but we won't
speak of Her again. It shall be a prohibited topic between us." In this
tacit attitude I found an element of relief. If I were to be forced into
his daily companionship I must not be specifically reminded at every
turn that he was the husband of his wife. I had stepped knee-deep into
this miserable Rubicon of financial venture as the agent of others, and
turning back was impossible. Afterward.... But at this point I stopped.
I could not yet bring myself to think of any afterward.

Inasmuch as Weighborne and I were for a time to travel the same trail
and since, as my reason insisted, he was guilty of no injury to me
except an injury so fantastic that only destiny could be blamed, and
since, too, he was all unconscious even of that, there must be truc