t fine here, I thought."

"Oh, fine, yes. Dwight gives me what I have. And I do their work."

"I see," said Cornish. "I never thought of that," he added. She caught
his speculative look--he had heard a tale or two concerning her return,
as who in Warbleton had not heard?

"You're wondering why I didn't stay with him!" Lulu said recklessly.
This was no less than wrung from her, but its utterance occasioned in
her an unspeakable relief.

"Oh, no," Cornish disclaimed, and coloured and rocked.

"Yes, you are," she swept on. "The whole town's wondering. Well, I'd
like 'em to know, but Dwight won't let me tell."

Cornish frowned, trying to understand.

"'Won't let you!'" he repeated. "I should say that was your own affair."

"No. Not when Dwight gives me all I have."

"Oh, that--" said Cornish. "That's not right."

"No. But there it is. It puts me--you see what it does to me. They
think--they all think my--husband left me."

It was curious to hear her bring out that word--tentatively,
deprecatingly, like some one daring a foreign phrase without warrant.

Cornish said feebly: "Oh, well...."

Before she willed it, she was telling him:

"He didn't. He didn't leave me," she cried with passion. "He had another
wife." Incredibly it was as if she were defending both him and herself.

"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.

She poured it out, in her passion to tell some one, to share her news of
her state where there would be neither hardness nor censure.

"We were in Savannah, Georgia," she said. "We were going to leave for
Oregon--going to go through California. We were in the hotel, and he was
going out to get the tickets. He started to go. Then he came back. I was
sitting the same as there. He opened the door again--the same as here. I
saw he looked different--and he said quick: 'There's something you'd
ought to know before we go.' And of course I said, 'What?' And he said
it right out--how he was married eighteen years ago and in two years she
ran away and she must be dead but he wasn't sure. He hadn't the proofs.
So of course I came home. But it wasn't him left me."

"No, no. Of course he didn't," Cornish said earnestly. "But Lord
sakes--" he said again. He rose to walk about, found it impracticable
and sat down.

"That's what Dwight don't want me to tell--he thinks it isn't true. He
thinks--he didn't have any other wife. He thinks he wanted--" Lulu
looked up at him.

"You see," she said, "Dwight thinks he didn't w