"You--you"--she trembled aghast--"you would n't dare repeat what I've told you!"

"You don't want to stagger on in the dark any longer. You'll let me tell him."

She rose to her feet, her face white.

"Peter," she said slowly, "if ever you told him that, I'd never forgive you. If ever you told him, I 'd deny it. You 'd only force me into more lies. You'd only crush me lower."

"Steady, Marjory," he said.

"You're wonderful, Peter!" she exclaimed. "You 've--you 've been seeing visions. But when you speak of telling him what I've told you, you don't understand how terrible that would be. Peter--you'll promise me you won't do that?"

She was pleading, with panic in her eyes.

"Yet, if he knew, he'd come racing to you."

"He'd do that because he's a gentleman and four-square. He'd come to me and pretend. He'd feel himself at fault, and pity me. Do you know how it hurts a woman to be pitied? I'd rather he'd hate me. I'd rather he'd forget me altogether.",

"But what of the talks I had with him in the dark?" he questioned. "When he talked to me of you then, it was not in pity."

"Because,"--she choked,--"because he does n't know himself as I know him.

He--he does n't like changes--dear Monte. It disturbed him to go because it would have been so much easier to have stayed. So, for the moment, he may have been--a bit sentimental."

"You don't think as little of him as that!" he cried.

"He--he is the man who married me," she answered unsteadily. "It was--just Monte who married me--honest, easy-going, care-free Monte, who is willing to do a woman a favor even to the extent of marrying her. He is very honest and very gallant and very normal. He likes one day to be as another. He does n't wish to be stirred up. He asked me this, Peter: 'Is n't it possible to care without caring too much?' And I said, 'Yes.'

That was why he married me. He had seen others who cared a great deal, and they frightened him. They cared so much that they made themselves uncomfortable, and he feared that."

"Good Lord, you call that man Covington?" exclaimed Peter.

"No--just Monte," Marjory answered quickly. "It's just the outside of him. The man you call Covington--the man inside--is another man."

"It's the real man," declared Peter.

"Yes," she nodded, with a catch in her voice. "That's the real man.

But--don't you understand?--it was n't that man who married me. It was Monte who married me to escape Covington. He trusted me not to disturb the real man, just as I trusted him not to disturb the real me."

Peter leaned forward with a new hope in his eyes.

"Then," he said, "perhaps, after all, he did n't get to the real you."

Quite simply she replied:--

"He did, Peter. He does not know it, but he did."

"You are sure?"

She knew the pain she was causing him, but she answered:--

"Yes. I could n't admit that to any one else in the world but you--and it hurts you, Peter."

"It hurts like the devil," he said.

She placed her hand upon his.

"Poor Peter," she said gently.

"It hurts like the devil, but it's nothing for you to pity me for," he put in quickly. "I'd rather have the hurt from you than nothing."

"You feel like that?" she asked earnestly.

"Yes."

"Then," she said, "you must understand how, even with me, the joy and the grief are one?"

"Yes, I understand that. Only if he knew--"

"He'd come back to me, you're going to say again. And I tell you again, I won't have him come back, kind and gentle and smiling. If he came back now,--if it were possible for him really to come to me,--I 'd want him to ache with love. I 'd want him to be hurt with love."

She was talking fiercely, with a wild, unrestrained pa.s.sion such as Peter had never seen in any woman.

"I 'd want," she hurried on, out of all control of herself--"I'd want everything I don't want him to give--everything I 've no right to ask. I 'd want him to live on tiptoe from one morning through to the next. I'd begrudge him every minute he was just comfortable. I'd want him always eager, always worried, because I 'd be always looking for him to do great things. I 'd have him always ready for great sacrifices--not for me alone, but for himself. I 'd be so proud of him I think I--I could with a smile see him sacrifice even his life for another. For I should know that, after a little waiting, I should meet him again, a finer and n.o.bler man. And all those things I asked of him I should want to do for him. I 'd like to lay down my life for him."

She stopped as abruptly as she had begun, staring about like some one suddenly awakened to find herself in a strange country. It was Peter's voice that brought her back again to the empty room.

"How you do love him!" he said solemnly.

"Peter," she cried, "you shouldn't have listened!"

She shrank back toward the door.

"And I--I thought just kisses on the eyes stood for love," he added.

"You must forget all I said," she moaned. "I was mad--for a moment!"

"You were wonderful," he told her.

She was still backing toward the door.

"I'm going off to hide," she said piteously.

"Not that," he called after her.

But the door closed in front of her. The door closed in front of him.

With his lips clenched, Peter Noyes walked back to the Hotel des Roses.