he said. "I kissed her, more than once."

"Her lips?" Meg asked.

"Yes, Meg, her lips."

"You kissed her as you have kissed me to-night?"

"Good heavens, no!" he cried. "Meg, how could you think it?"

"Life is strange," Meg said, a little wearily. "When everything seems
most beautiful, some ugliness shows its head . . . the light gets so
dim."

"Dearest," Mike said, "do you remember what you said on that morning
when we found each other again? You said, 'Let's go forward; things
are explained.'"

"Yes, I remember," she said, and as she spoke happiness shone in her
eyes like a flame relit; "yes, I said regrets were foolish, I said I
understood. But . . ." she hesitated; the thought of Mike's lips
pressed to any other woman's than her own stifled her. She was his so
completely, that any other man's lips pressed to hers, except Freddy's,
would nauseate her. Yet Mike had kissed Millicent. Was it that night
on the terrace, or the evening at the Pyramids? she wondered.

"We have gone forward, Meg. Millicent"--Meg shivered as he said the
woman's Christian name--"was splendid at the Pyramids, she really was."

Again Meg shivered. Splendid! How, she wondered, had she been
splendid? Meg hated being an inquisitor, yet she had to know; it was
her right.

"Then it was not at the Pyramids that you kissed her?" she asked.

"No, no!" Mike said. "Of course not!" He looked at her in wonder.
"If it had been, I should not have dared to kiss you to-night."

"It's nice of you to say that, dear. Oh, Mike," she said tenderly,
"you mean the world to me! I shall grow older by years for each moment
that we don't trust one another! I should have known, I should never
have doubted! You've chosen a very jealous woman, Mike."

"If you'd gone off to the Pyramids with some one whom I disliked as
much as you dislike Millicent, I'd have been furious!" He felt Meg
shiver. He divined the reason; he would not let that hurt her again.
"You hate her, Meg," he said. "Just in the way I'd hate a man
who . . ." he paused.

"Who what?" Meg said.

"Don't ask me," he said. "I never forgot you for one moment when I was
with her at the Pyramids. You kept close to me, dearest. And the
other episode is past and forgotten--it was just a little bit of
vulgarity, Meg, nothing more."

"Since we made friends, there's been nothing between you that would
make your kisses to me a mere vulgarity, Mike?"

"Nothing," he said. "And so