“He was much more matter-of-fact, I suppose?”

“Yes—­he was.”

“Where did this scene take place?”

“In the drawing-room one afternoon when he had walked home with me from a tea.”

“What happened the next time you met him?”

“I never saw him again—­that is, alone.”

Hedworth’s face and tone changed suddenly.  Both softened.  “Why not?”

She raised her head from the back of the sofa and lifted her chin defiantly.  “I did not dare—­if you will know.  Carnath came along shortly after, and I took him as soon as he offered himself.  Why do you look so pleased?  The one was as bad as the other, only in the course I took there was no scandal.”

“Which is the point.  Scandal and snubs and vulgar insinuation in print and out of it would have demoralized you.  How do you feel towards this man now?  If he were free and came for you would you marry him?”

She shook her head, and looked up at him, smiling and blushing again.  “He is no more to me than one of the book-heroes I used to fancy myself in love with.”

“Why didn’t he get a divorce and marry you?  I thought any one could get a divorce in the States.”

“You English people know so much about the United States!  You are willing to believe anything and to know nothing.  I really think you feel that your dignity would be compromised if you knew as much about America as we know about Europe.  Your attitude is like that of old people to a new invention which is too remarkable for their powers of appreciation, so they take refuge in disdain.”

He smiled, as he always did when her patriotism flamed.  “You haven’t answered my question.”

“What?—­oh, divorce.  If a man has a good wife, no matter how uncongenial, he can’t get rid of her unless he is a brute; and I didn’t happen to like that sort of man.”

“Like?  I thought you said just now that you loved him.”

“I don’t think now that I did.  I explained that a while ago.”

“Why have you changed your mind?”

“I never knew a man to ask so many questions.”

But before he left her he knew.

* * * * *

Edith anticipated pleasurably the sensation her engagement would make, but did not announce it at once.  She had a certain feminine secretiveness which made her doubly enjoy a happiness undiluted by publicity; moreover, some further deference was due to Carnath.  She was very happy, the more so as she had believed until a short while ago that her strong temperamental possibilities were vaulted in her nature’s little church-yard.  “Our hearts after first love are like our dead,” she thought; “they sleep until the hour of resurrection.”  Hedworth dominated her, had taken her love rather than asked for it, and, although he was jealous and exacting, she was haunted by the traditions of man’s mutability, and studied her resources as it had never occurred