ove with the times, my dear Hickson," said Riatt bitterly.

"Linburne's no good," Ned went on, "not where women are concerned. He
wouldn't treat her well if he did marry her. Why, Riatt," he added
solemnly, "I'd far rather see her married to you than to him."

If Max felt disposed to smile at this innocent endorsement, he suppressed
the inclination, and merely answered:

"You may have your wish."

"I hope so," said Ned. "But you mustn't go off to kingdom-come, and leave
Linburne a clear field. He's a man who knows how to talk to women, and
what with the infatuation she has always had for him--"

"You think she has always cared for him?" asked Max. He tried to smooth
his tone down to one of calm interest, but it alarmed Hickson.

"I don't know," he returned hastily. "I used to think so, but I may be
wrong. I thought the same thing about you at the Usshers'. She kept
saying she wasn't a bit in love with you, but it seemed to me she was
different with you from what she had ever been with any one else. I
suppose I oughtn't to have said that either. Upon my word, Riatt, it is
awfully good of you to let me talk like this! I can assure you it is a
great relief to me."

His companion could hardly have echoed this sentiment. As he walked back
alone to his hotel, he found that Hickson's words had put the last
touches to his mental discomfort.

At first his own conduct had seemed inexplicable to him. Everything had
been going well, he had been just about to be free from the whole
entanglement, when an impulse of primitive jealousy and fierce masculine
egotism had suddenly brought him to New York and bound him hand and foot.
It had not been an agreeable prospect--to live among people whose
standards he did not understand, with a woman whom he did not love. But,
since his conversation with Hickson, his eyes were opened, and he saw the
situation in far more tragic colors.

He _did_ love her. He did not believe in her or trust her; he had no
illusions as to her feeling for him, but his for her was clear--he loved
her, loved her with that strange mingling of passion and hatred so often
found and so rarely admitted.

He could imagine a man's learning, even under the most suspicious
circumstances, to conquer jealousy of a woman who loved him. Or he could
imagine having confidence in a woman who did not pretend love. But to be
married to a woman whom you love, without a shred of belief either in her
principles or her affection,