me." She faced
him stanchly, looking denial.

"But I must tell you something," he went on quickly, "something horrible
and absurd and unbelievable." She listened, and grew faint in an agony
of unbelief, while he told her what had inspired Ewing's behavior the
night before. She made him repeat it, testing each detail, weighing its
credibility against Ewing's inexperience; dazedly trying to see herself
as he must see her now. Alden Teevan regarded her with quickening
sympathy.

"It wasn't a pretty thing to do, Nell, but I saw he had some deviltry
afoot, and I got it from him--I half choked and half wheedled it from
him. Fortunately he was drunk or I couldn't have got it either way. But
now you know. It began, as nearly as I could gather, one night last
spring when Ewing saw you leaving the house. The vain little fool
guessed he'd seen you, and told him the tale about a woman who'd been
harassing him because he was trying to break off an affair with her."

"I remember----"

"And then last night----"

"Last night--ah, last night!" She laughed weakly, recalling the scene
that had met Ewing's eyes, perceiving what he must have thought. "I'd
have done it for you," she heard him say again, and shuddered. She
recalled, too, her own later urging, "Never let him tell you anything."
How pitiful she must have seemed to him, and how monstrous! She laughed
again wildly, suddenly struck by the cunning of this satire on truth.
Alden Teevan recalled her from the picture.

"It was like him, wasn't it, Nell?--like both of them--like him to say
it, and like the other to believe. But the harm can be undone. You can
explain--a word or two."

She stared at him in sudden consternation. It had flashed upon her that
no half truth would satisfy Ewing. She knew she would be unequal to any
adequate fiction; she would falter and he would see to the heart of her
lie. She must let him think as he did--or blacken his dearest memory.
But to Alden Teevan she only said:

"Ah, yes--a word will explain--and I'm so grateful to you." She was
wondering then if she were glad or sorry that he had told her. She might
have lived out her time without knowing, she thought.

"Of course, if you'd like me to tell him, Nell----"

"No, no, Alden, thank you; but that's for me."

They had not spoken Ewing's name, but his concern in the matter, the
meaning of his faith in the woman, was a matter that seemed to lie open
to them both. Alden Teevan had assumed it