I'm glad I understand," I finally admitted.

The woman at the desk seemed puzzled. Then she looked from me to her
column of figures and from her column of figures to the huddled roofs
and walls of the city and the greening foot-hills and the solemn white
crowns of the Rockies behind them.

"Are you quite sure, Mrs. McKail, that you do understand?" she asked
at last, with just a touch of challenge in the question.

"Isn't it quite simple now?" I demanded.

She found the courage to face me again.

"I don't think this sort of thing is ever simple," she replied, with
much more emotion than I had expected of her.

"But it's at least clear how it must end," I found the courage to
point out to her.

"Is that clear to _you_?" demanded the woman who was stepping into my
shoes. It seemed odd, at the moment, that I should feel vaguely sorry
for her.

"Perhaps you might make it clearer," I prompted.

"I'd rather Duncan did that," she replied, using my husband's first
name, obviously, without knowing she had done so.

"Wouldn't it be fairer--for the two of us--now? Wouldn't it be
cleaner?" I rather tremulously asked of her.

She nodded and stared down at the sheet covered with small columns of
figures.

"I don't know whether you know it or not," she said with a studied
sort of quietness, "but last week Mr. McKail began making arrangements
to establish a residence in Nevada. He will have to live there, of
course, for at least six months, perhaps even longer."

I could feel this sinking in, like water going through
blotting-paper. The woman at the desk must have misinterpreted my
silence, for she was moved to say, in a heavier effort at
self-defense, "He _knew_, of course, that you cared for some one
else."

I looked at her, as though she were a thousand miles away. I stood
there impressed by the utter inadequacy of speech. And the thing that
puzzled me was that there was an air of honesty about the woman. She
still so desperately clung to her self-respect that she wanted me to
understand both her predicament and her motives. I could hear her
explaining that my husband had no intention of going to Reno, but
would live in Virginia City, where he was taking up some actual mining
interests. Such things were not pleasant, of course. But this one
could be put through without difficulty. Mr. McKail had been assured
of that.

I tried to pull myself together, wondering why I should so suddenly
feel like a marked woman, a