“I say, Bess,” he remarked casually at length, “you’ve dusted that unoffending table three times by actual count since I’ve been watching.  Wouldn’t it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?”

The girl did not smile.

“Perhaps.”  She put away the cloth judicially.  “I fancied you were tolerably amused as it was.  However, if you prefer—­” She drew another chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.

A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had grown to assume in her presence took its place.

“By the way, Bess,” he commented, “isn’t it about time to drop sarcasm when you and I are together?  I know I’ve been a most reprehensible offender, but haven’t I been punished enough?”

“Punished?” There was just the ghost of a smile.  “Is this your idea of punishment?”

The man flushed involuntarily.  His face had cleared remarkably in the past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed plain.

“Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe.  Leastways you’ve held me at arm’s length until I’m beginning to despair.”

“Despair?” Again the ghost smiled forth.  “Do you fancy I’m so dull that I don’t realise what I’m doing, what you’ve done?”

For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to abandon at once.

“You can’t deny that you’ve held me away all this last week, Bess,” he objected.  “You’ve permitted me to call and call again; but that is all.  Otherwise we’re not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned.”

“Nearer?” This time the smile did not come.  Even the ghost refused to appear.  “I wonder if that’s true.”  A pause.  “At least I’ve gotten immeasurably farther away from another.”

“Your husband you mean?”

“I mean How.  There are but you and he in my life.”

The pose was abandoned.  It was useless now.

“Tell me, Bess,” said the man intimately.  “You and I mean too much to each other not to know everything there is to know.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”  The girl did not dissimulate now.  The inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly—­and she herself had chosen.  “He’s merely given me up.”

“He knows, Bess?” Blank unbelief was on the questioner’s face, something else as well, something akin to exultation.

“Yes,” repressedly.  “He’s known since that first night.”

“And he hasn’t objected, hasn’t done anything at all?”

Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old pride, broke forth.

“Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn’t have known before this if he objected?” she flamed.

“Bess!”

“I beg your pardon.  I shouldn’t have said that.”  Already the blaze had died, never to be rekindled.  “Forget that I said that.  I didn’t mean to.”