“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 for folly.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You haven’t tried to play the game,” he answered tensely.  “For months you’ve been withdrawing into your shell.  You’ve been clanking your chains and half-heartedly wishing for some mysterious power to strike them off.  It wasn’t a thing you undertook lightly.  It isn’t a thing—­marriage, I mean—­that you hold lightly.  That being the case, you would have been wise to try making the best of it, instead of making the worst of it.  But you let yourself drift into a state of mind where you—­well, you see the result.  I saw it coming.  I didn’t need to happen in this afternoon to know that there were undercurrents of feeling swirling about.  And so the way you feel now is in itself a penalty.  If you let Monohan cut any more figure in your thoughts, you’ll pay bigger in the end.”

“I can’t help my thoughts, or I should say my feelings,” she said wearily.

“You think you love him,” Fyfe made low reply.  “As a matter of fact, you love what you think he is.  I daresay that he has sworn his affection by all that’s good and great.  But if you were convinced that he didn’t really care, that his flowery protestations had a double end in view, would you still love him?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured.  “But that’s beside the point.  I do love him.  I know it’s unwise.  It’s a feeling that has overwhelmed me in a way that I didn’t believe possible, that I had hoped to avoid.  But—­but I can’t pretend, Jack.  I don’t want you to misunderstand.  I don’t want this to make us both miserable.  I don’t want it to generate an atmosphere of suspicion and jealousy.  We’d only be fighting about a shadow.  I never cheated at anything in my life.  You can trust me still, can’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Fyfe answered without hesitation.

“Then that’s all there is to it,” she replied, “unless—­unless you’re ready to give me up as a hopeless case, and let me go away and blunder along the best I can.”

He shook his head.

“I haven’t even considered that,” he said.  “Very likely it’s unwise of me to say this,—­it will probably antagonize you,—­but I know Monohan better than you do.  I’d go pretty far to keep you two apart—­now—­for your sake.”