o your rooms since
you left her?"

"Since I left her at the station? I came straight here."

"Ah, yes--you COULD: there was no reason--" Her words passed into a
silent musing.

Thursdale moved nervously nearer. "You said you had something to tell
me?"

"Perhaps I had better let her do so. There may be a letter at your
rooms."

"A letter? What do you mean? A letter from HER? What has happened?"

His paleness shook her, and she raised a hand of reassurance. "Nothing
has happened--perhaps that is just the worst of it. You always HATED,
you know," she added incoherently, "to have things happen: you never
would let them."

"And now--?"

"Well, that was what she came here for: I supposed you had guessed. To
know if anything had happened."

"Had happened?" He gazed at her slowly. "Between you and me?" he said
with a rush of light.

The words were so much cruder than any that had ever passed between them
that the color rose to her face; but she held his startled gaze.

"You know girls are not quite as unsophisticated as they used to be. Are
you surprised that such an idea should occur to her?"

His own color answered hers: it was the only reply that came to him.

Mrs. Vervain went on, smoothly: "I supposed it might have struck you
that there were times when we presented that appearance."

He made an impatient gesture. "A man's past is his own!"

"Perhaps--it certainly never belongs to the woman who has shared it. But
one learns such truths only by experience; and Miss Gaynor is naturally
inexperienced."

"Of course--but--supposing her act a natural one--" he floundered
lamentably among his innuendoes--"I still don't see--how there was
anything--"

"Anything to take hold of? There wasn't--"

"Well, then--?" escaped him, in crude satisfaction; but as she did not
complete the sentence he went on with a faltering laugh: "She can hardly
object to the existence of a mere friendship between us!"

"But she does," said Mrs. Vervain.

Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no trace of
jealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still hear the candid
ring of the girl's praise of Mrs. Vervain. If she were such an abyss of
insincerity as to dissemble distrust under such frankness, she must at
least be more subtle than to bring her doubts to her rival for solution.
The situation seemed one through which one could no longer move in a
penumbra, and he let in a burst of light with the direc