from the hard glare of his misery. As this
ecstatic sense enveloped him he found it more and more difficult to
follow her words and to frame an answer; but what did anything matter,
except that her voice should go on, and the syllables fall like soft
touches on his tortured brain?

"Don't you know," she continued, "the bliss of waking from a bad dream
in one's own quiet room, and going slowly over all the horror without
being afraid of it any more? That's what I'm doing now. And that's why
I understand Owen..." She broke off, and he felt her touch on his arm.
"BECAUSE I'D DREAMED THE HORROR TOO!"

He understood her then, and stammered: "You?"

"Forgive me! And let me tell you!...It will help you to understand
Owen...There WERE little things...little signs...once I had begun to
watch for them: your reluctance to speak about her...her reserve with
you...a sort of constraint we'd never seen in her before..."

She laughed up at him, and with her hands in his he contrived to say:
"NOW you understand why?"

"Oh, I understand; of course I understand; and I want you to laugh
at me--with me! Because there were other things too...crazier things
still...There was even--last night on the terrace--her pink cloak..."

"Her pink cloak?" Now he honestly wondered, and as she saw it she
blushed.

"You've forgotten about the cloak? The pink cloak that Owen saw you with
at the play in Paris? Yes...yes...I was mad enough for that!...It does
me good to laugh about it now! But you ought to know that I'm going
to be a jealous woman...a ridiculously jealous woman...you ought to be
warned of it in time..."

He had dropped her hands, and she leaned close and lifted her arms to
his neck with one of her rare gestures of surrender.

"I don't know why it is; but it makes me happier now to have been so
foolish!"

Her lips were parted in a noiseless laugh and the tremor of her lashes
made their shadow move on her cheek. He looked at her through a mist of
pain and saw all her offered beauty held up like a cup to his lips; but
as he stooped to it a darkness seemed to fall between them, her arms
slipped from his shoulders and she drew away from him abruptly.

"But she WAS with you, then?" she exclaimed; and then, as he stared at
her: "Oh, don't say no! Only go and look at your eyes!"

He stood speechless, and she pressed on: "Don't deny it--oh, don't deny
it! What will be left for me to imagine if you do? Don't you see how
every single thi