ive myself as you did to deceive me. You never intended to marry
me, not for a moment, not even at the moment when you called God to
witness that you would."

Her hand had gone from the table, from it and him she turned away.

Loftus, who at the arraignment had retreated a full inch in his chair,
called after her. "It is untrue; what I said, I meant."

Marie turned back. "Then if you meant it, marry me this night. If you
have any honor, any whatever, a spark of it, you will; if not----"

She paused and looked at him. It was not this at all she had meant to
say. She had meant to entreat him, to picture what their life might
be, to tell him of her enveloping love, and that failing, to go, but
to go without words, without reproaches, without suffering that which
had been between them to be marred by vituperation and, so marred, to
descend to the level of some coarse intrigue. But something, his
manner, the manifest lie about his mother, the apparition of that
other woman, battening on nerves overwrought had irritated her into
entire forgetfulness of what she had meant to do and say.

The pause Loftus noticed. What was behind it he misconstrued. "Don't
mind me," he encouragingly interjected. "Threaten away. It is so nice
and well-bred. Yet I must be allowed to say that while I did intend to
marry you, the intention has been rather weakened through just such
scenes as this. Though, to be frank, it is not so much that I object
to scenes as it is that, if scenes there must be, I prefer to make
them myself."

At the humor of that Marie ran her nails into her hands, dug them in.
Without some such moxa it seemed to her that she might take and hurl
the lamp at him, fire the place and, fate favoring, be calcinated with
him there.

"And now that I have been frank," he went on, "let me be franker. You
and I have ceased to be able to hit it off. The blame for that I will,
if you like, assume."

Then he too paused. But not at all because he did not fully know what
he meant to do and say.

"Marie," he continued, putting a hand in a pocket as he spoke, "in the
past year we have been more than friends. Friends at least let us
remain. Friends do part, and for awhile we must. Your voice, like
yourself, is charming. If I may advise, go and study abroad. Though if
you prefer remain here. But, of course, whatever you do you will need
money. I have brought some."

In his hand now was a card case which he offered her. She took it,
l