Listlessly she looked down at him, dropped one slim hand on his shoulder, considering him.

“The curious part of it is,” she said, “that all the scorn in your voice was for Marianne Valdez and none for Penrhyn Cardemon.”

He said nothing.

“Such a queer, topsy-turvy world,” she sighed, letting her hand wander from his shoulder to his thick, short hair.  She caressed his forehead thoughtfully.

“I suppose some man will say that of me some day....  But that is a little matter—­compared to making life happy for you....  To be your mistress could never make me unhappy.”

“To be your husband—­and to put an end to all these damnable doubts and misgivings and cross-purposes would make me happy all my life!” he burst out with a violence that startled her.

“Hush, Louis.  We must not begin that hopeless argument again.”

“Valerie!  Valerie!  You are breaking my heart!”

“Hush, dear.  You know I am not.”

She looked down at him; her lip was trembling.

Suddenly she slid down to the floor and knelt there confronting him, her arms around him.

“Dearer than all the world and heaven!—­do you think that I am breaking your heart?  You know I am not.  You know what I am doing for your sake, for your family’s sake, for my own.  I am only giving you a love that can cause them no pain, bring no regret to you.  Take it, then, and kiss me.”

But the days were full of little scenes like this—­of earnest, fiery discussions, of passionate arguments, of flashes of temper ending in tears and heavenly reconciliation.

He had gone for two weeks to visit his father and mother at their summer home near Portsmouth, and before he went he took her in his arms and told her how ashamed he was of his bad temper at the idea of her going on the Mohave, and said that she might go; that he did trust her anywhere, and that he was trying to learn to concede to her the same liberty of action and of choice that any man enjoyed.

But she convinced him very sweetly that she really had no desire to go, and sent him off to Spindrift House happy, and madly in love; which resulted in two letters a day from him, and in her passing long evenings in confidential duets with Rita Tevis.

Rita had taken the bedroom next to Valerie’s, and together they had added the luxury of a tiny living room to the suite.

It was the first time that either had ever had any place in which to receive anybody; and now, delighted to be able to ask people, they let it be known that their friends could have tea with them.

Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves.

“This is exceedingly grand,” said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour around the pretty little sitting room.  “We can have all kinds of a rough house now.”  And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the rug and very gravely turned a somersault.