“Nonsense, Evelyn!” he replied bruskly.  “You must be careful what you say to me!”

“I haven’t been careful before!” she asserted.

He bit his lips.  She went swiftly on.

“I have told you everything!  I don’t care what happens to me—­you know I don’t, Jack!  I am deadly desperately tired!” She paused, then she cried vehemently.  “One endures a situation as long as one can, but there comes a time when it is impossible to go on with the falsehood any longer, and I have reached that time!  It is my life, my happiness that are at stake!”

“Sometimes it is better to do without happiness,” he philosophized.

“That is silly, Jack, no one believes that sort of thing any more; but it is good to teach to women and children, it saves a lot of bother, I suppose.  But men take their happiness regardless of the rights of others!”

“Not always,” he said.

“Yes, always!” she insisted.

“But you knew what Marsh was before you married him.”

“It’s a woman’s vanity to believe she can reform, can control a man.”  She glanced at him furtively.  What had happened to change him?  Always until now he had responded to the recklessness of her mood, he had seemed to understand her without the need of words.  Her brows met in an angry frown.  Was he a coward?  Did he fear Marshall Langham?  Once more she rested her hand on his arm.  “Jack, dear Jack, are you going to fail me, too?”

“What would you have me say or do, Evelyn?” he demanded impatiently.

She regarded him sadly.

“What has made you change, Jack?  What is it; what have I done?  Why did you not answer my letters?  Why did you not come to see me?”

“I only learned that you were in town this afternoon,” he said.

“Yes, but you had no intention of coming, I know you hadn’t!  You would have left Mount Hope without even a good-by to me!”

“It is hard enough to have to go, Evelyn!”

“It isn’t that, Jack.  What have I done?  How have I displeased you?”

“You haven’t displeased me, Evelyn,” he faltered.

“Then why have you treated me as you have?”

“I thought it would be easier,” he said.

“Have you forgotten what friends we were once?” she asked softly.  “You always helped me out of my difficulties then, and you told me once that you cared—­a great deal for me, more than you should ever care for any woman!”

“Yes,” he answered shortly, and was silent.

He would scarcely have admitted to himself how foolish his early passion had been, for it was at least sincere and there could have been no sacrifice, at one time, that he would not have willingly made for her sake.  His later sentiment for her had been a disgracing and a disgraceful thing, and he was glad to think of this boyish love, since it carried him back to a time before he had wrought only misery for himself.  She misunderstood his reticence, she could not realize that she had lost the power that had once been hers.