wonder? Here I am, left all by myself to get through
time as best I can. How long have you been away this time? Four
weeks?"

"Just under. And this was a short trip. It is hard lines, rather; but
then, you always knew what life up here was going to mean. You did it
with your eyes open."

"It is mean of you to throw it at me. I never thought you would have
done it," she flashed.

"Throw what? Oh, I see. I wasn't referring to--that. You might as
well give me the benefit of the doubt, Hermia. You ought to know that I
was referring to our coming out here at all. We might have gone
anywhere else, so it wasn't England."

She looked down at him as he sat there, for she was standing, or
restlessly moving about. How cool and passionless he was now, she
thought. He had not always been so. Decidedly he was tired of her.
She could not help drawing a mental contrast between him and the other.
The countenance of this one, with its well-cut features, but lined and
weather-worn, dark and bronzed by sun and exposure, was indeed a
contrast to that of the other, in its smooth, clear-skinned blue-eyed
comeliness of youth. Yet, this one, sitting there, strong,
reposeful-looking in his cool white raiment was, and would always be,
_the_ one when she came to pass in review her polyandrous experiences.

Now his very tranquillity, indifference she called it, nettled her. At
any other time, indeed, it would have served as a powerful draw in
keeping her to him; now however, the entirely fresh excitement she had
struck formed an effective counterblast. If he was tired of her, she
would let him see that she was even more tired of him, whether she was
so or not.

"To revert to Spence," he said. "What pleasure can it give you to make
a bigger fool of the young idiot than his parents and Nature have
already made him?"

"He isn't at all a fool," snapped Hermia, shortly.

"Not eh? Well, everything is relative, even in terminology. We'll call
him not so wise as some other people, if you prefer it. If he was as
wise, he might be over head and ears in love with you without giving it
away at every turn--in fact, thrusting it into the very face of the
ordinary observer."

"Why, Hilary, you really are jealous!" she cried with a ringing laugh.
For a moment, however, she had looked perturbed.

"Ha, ha! That's good--distinctly good. Jealous! There is, or ought to
be, no such thing, once past the callowness of youth. The self