anically the straight,
reddish-tinged hair from his brow, he looked up at her and said briefly,
in a tone barren of all emotion:

"Well?"

She was suddenly dumb. Words failed her utterly. Yet there was much to
be said, much that was needful to say. They could not go on with a cloud
like that over them, a cloud that had to be dissipated in the crucible
of words. Yet she could not begin. Fyfe, after a prolonged silence,
seemed to grasp her difficulty. Abruptly he began to speak, cutting
straight to the heart of his subject, after his fashion.

"It's a pity things had to take his particular turn," said he. "But now
that you're face to face with something definite, what do you propose to
do about it?"

"Nothing," she answered slowly. "I can't help the feeling. It's there.
But I can thrust it into the background, go on as if it didn't exist.
There's nothing else for me to do, that I can see. I'm sorry, Jack."

"So am I," he said grimly. "Still, it was a chance we took,--or I took,
rather. I seem to have made a mistake or two, in my estimate of both you
and myself. That is human enough, I suppose. You're making a bigger
mistake than I did though, to let Monohan sweep you off your feet."

There was something that she read for contempt in his tone. It stung
her.

"He hasn't swept me off my feet, as you put it," she cried. "Good
Heavens, do you think I'm that spineless sort of creature? I've never
forgotten I'm your wife. I've got a little self-respect left yet, if I
was weak enough to grasp at the straw you threw me in the beginning. I
was honest with you then. I'm trying to be honest with you now."

"I know, Stella," he said gently. "I'm not throwing mud. It's a damnably
unfortunate state of affairs, that's all. I foresaw something of the
sort when we were married. You were candid enough about your attitude.
But I told myself like a conceited fool that I could make your life so
full that in a little while I'd be the only possible figure on your
horizon. I've failed. I've known for some time that I was going to fail.
You're not the thin-blooded type of woman that is satisfied with
pleasant surroundings and any sort of man. You're bound to run the gamut
of all the emotions, sometime and somewhere. I loved you, and I thought
in my conceit I could make myself the man, the one man who would mean
everything to you."

"Just the same," he continued, "you've been a fool, and I don't see how
you can avoid paying the penalty f