“Certainly I do!  He seemed a dear,” she said cordially.

“I wish they had not come!” Martie said sombrely.

“You—­wish—?” Sally’s anxious eyes flashed to her face.

“That they had never come!”

“Oh, Mart!  Oh, Mart, why?”

“Because—­because I think perhaps I should not marry Cliff, feeling as I do to John!” Martie said desperately.

She had not quite meant it when she said it:  her sick heart was merely trying to reach Sally’s concern, it frightened her now to feel that it was almost true.

“What!” Sally whispered.

She was roused now:  too much roused.  Martie began hastily to reassure Sally, and herself, too.

“Oh, I will, Sally.  Of course I will.  And nobody will ever know this except you and me!”

“Martie, dear, he does care then?”

“Oh, yes, he cares!”

“But, Mart—­that’s terrible!”

Martie laughed ruefully.

“It’s miserable!” she agreed, her eyes watering even while she smiled.

“He knew about Cliff?” Sally questioned.

“Oh, yes!”

“And his own wife is alive?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Well, then?” Sally concluded anxiously.  “What does he want—­what does he expect you to do?”

To this Martie only answered unhappily: 

“I don’t know.”

Sally, staring at her in distress, was silent.  But as Martie suddenly seemed to put the subject aside, and called the children for supper, she turned back to the stove in relief.  Presently they were all gathered about the kitchen table, Martie encouraging the children, as usual, to launch into the conversation, and laughing in quite her usual merry manner at their observations.  She took Mary into her lap, ruffling the curly little head with her kisses, and whispering endearments into the small ear.  But Sally noticed that she was not eating.

Later, when they had put away the hot, clean dishes, and made the kitchen orderly for the night, Sally touched somewhat awkwardly upon the delicate topic.

“Too bad—­about Mr. Dryden,” Sally ventured.  Martie, at the open doorway, gave no sign of hearing.  Her splendid bronze head was resting against the jamb, she was looking down the shabby little littered backyard to the river.  And suddenly it seemed to Sally that restless, lovely Martie did not really belong to Monroe, that this mysterious sister of hers never had belonged to Monroe, that Martie’s well-groomed hair and hands were as little in place here as Martie’s curious aloofness from the town affairs, as Martie’s blue eyes through which her hungry soul occasionally looked.  “I’m awfully sorry for him,” Sally went on, a little uncertainly.  “But what can you do?  He must realize—­”

“He realizes nothing!” Martie said, half-smiling, half-sighing.

“He’s not a Catholic, then?”

“No.  He’s—­nothing.”

“But you explained to him?  And you told him about Cliff?”