“I haven’t—­”

“Yes you have.  Please, please don’t quibble.  And hidden things are so dangerous.  It isn’t as if I would not understand.  You ought to give me credit for a little knowledge of human nature.  I knew perfectly well that when you married me—­you would think of Mary.  You could hardly help it.”

The professor sat up.  He was not at all sleepy now.  Mary had “murdered sleep.”  But he was still dazed.

“Wait a moment.”  He raised a restraining hand.  “Let me get this right.  You say you have noticed a certain lack of energy in my manner of late?”

“Anyone must have noticed it.”

“But I explained it, didn’t I?”

“Yes?” The slight smile on Desire’s lips was sufficient comment on the explanation.  The professor began to feel injured.

“Then I gather, further, that you do not accept the explanation?”

“Don’t be cross!  How could I?  I have eyes.  And my point is simply that there is no need for any concealment between us.  You promised that we should be friends.  Friends help friends when they are in trouble.”

The professor rumpled his hair The pinwheel in his brain was slowing down.  Already the marvelous something which accepts and adjusts the unexpected was hard at work restoring order.  Mary was not dead.  He had to reckon with Mary.  Very well, let Mary look to her-self.  Let her beware how she harassed a desperate man!  Let her—­but he was not pushed to extremes yet.

“I thought,” he said slowly, “that we had tacitly agreed not to reopen this subject.”

Desire looked surprised.

“And I still think that it would be better, much better to ignore it altogether.”

“Oh, but it wouldn’t,” said Desire.  “See how dreadfully dumpy you have been since Friday.”

“I have not been dumpy.  But supposing I have, there may be other reasons.  What if I can honorably assure you that I have not been thinking of the past at all?”

“Then I should want to know what you have been thinking of.”

“But supposing I were to go further and say that my thoughts are my own property?”

“That would be horridly rude, don’t you think?  And you are not at all a rude person.  If you’ll risk it, I will.”

Her smile was insufferably secure.

“You are willing to risk a great deal,” snapped Spence.  “But if it’s truth you want—­”

He almost confessed then.  The temptation to slay Mary with a few well chosen words almost overpowered him.  But he looked at the expectant face beside him and faltered.  Mary would not die alone.  With her would die this newborn comradeship.  And Desire’s smile, though insufferable, was sweet.  How would it feel to see that bright look change and pale to cold dislike?  Already in imagination he shivered under the frozen anger of that frank glance.

He could not risk it!