vely she had shifted her position putting herself between him
and the door. "It happened this morning," she went on in short
breathless phrases. "I never suspected anything--I thought we
were--perfectly happy... Suddenly he told me he was tired of me...
there is a girl he likes better... He has gone to her..." As she spoke,
the lurking anguish rose upon her, possessing her once more to the
exclusion of every other emotion. Her eyes ached, her throat swelled
with it, and two painful tears burnt a way down her face.

Arment's constraint was increasing visibly. "This--this is very
unfortunate," he began. "But I should say the law--"

"The law?" she echoed ironically. "When he asks for his freedom?"

"You are not obliged to give it."

"You were not obliged to give me mine--but you did."

He made a protesting gesture.

"You saw that the law couldn't help you--didn't you?" she went on.
"That is what I see now. The law represents material rights--it can't
go beyond. If we don't recognize an inner law...the obligation that
love creates...being loved as well as loving... there is nothing to
prevent our spreading ruin unhindered...is there?" She raised her head
plaintively, with the look of a bewildered child. "That is what I see
now...what I wanted to tell you. He leaves me because he's tired...but
_I_ was not tired; and I don't understand why he is. That's the
dreadful part of it--the not understanding: I hadn't realized what it
meant. But I've been thinking of it all day, and things have come back
to me--things I hadn't noticed...when you and I..." She moved closer to
him, and fixed her eyes on his with the gaze that tries to reach beyond
words. "I see now that _you_ didn't understand--did you?"

Their eyes met in a sudden shock of comprehension: a veil seemed to be
lifted between them. Arment's lip trembled.

"No," he said, "I didn't understand."

She gave a little cry, almost of triumph. "I knew it! I knew it! You
wondered--you tried to tell me--but no words came... You saw your life
falling in ruins...the world slipping from you...and you couldn't speak
or move!"

She sank down on the chair against which she had been leaning. "Now I
know--now I know," she repeated.

"I am very sorry for you," she heard Arment stammer.

She looked up quickly. "That's not what I came for. I don't want you to
be sorry. I came to ask you to forgive me...for not understanding that
_you_ didn't understand... That's all I wanted to s