with a start. The sharp sting of it seemed to
wake him. He blinked.

"You're joking," he said, feebly. There was a note of wistfulness in his
voice. "It isn't true?"

Sally kicked the leg of her chair irritably. She read insolent
disapproval into the words. He was daring to criticize...

"Of course it's true..."

"But..." A look of hopeless misery came into Ginger's pleasant face. He
hesitated. Then, with the air of a man bracing himself to a dreadful,
but unavoidable, ordeal, he went on. He spoke gruffly, and his eyes,
which had been fixed on Sally's, wandered down to the match on the
carpet. It was still glowing, and mechanically he put a foot on it.

"Foster's married," he said shortly. "He was married the day before I
left Chicago."

3

It seemed to Ginger that in the silence which followed, brooding over
the room like a living presence, even the noises in the street had
ceased, as though what he had said had been a spell cutting Sally
and himself off from the outer world. Only the little clock on the
mantelpiece ticked--ticked--ticked, like a heart beating fast.

He stared straight before him, conscious of a strange rigidity. He felt
incapable of movement, as he had sometimes felt in nightmares; and not
for all the wealth of America could he have raised his eyes just then to
Sally's face. He could see her hands. They had tightened on the arm of
the chair. The knuckles were white.

He was blaming himself bitterly now for his oafish clumsiness in
blurting out the news so abruptly. And yet, curiously, in his remorse
there was something of elation. Never before had he felt so near to her.
It was as though a barrier that had been between them had fallen.

Something moved... It was Sally's hand, slowly relaxing. The fingers
loosened their grip, tightened again, then, as if reluctantly relaxed
once more. The blood flowed back.

"Your cigarette's out."

Ginger started violently. Her voice, coming suddenly out of the silence,
had struck him like a blow.

"Oh, thanks!"

He forced himself to light another match. It sputtered noisily in the
stillness. He blew it out, and the uncanny quiet fell again.

Ginger drew at his cigarette mechanically. For an instant he had seen
Sally's face, white-cheeked and bright-eyed, the chin tilted like a flag
flying over a stricken field. His mood changed. All his emotions had
crystallized into a dull, futile rage, a helpless fury directed at a man
a thousand miles a