im wonder how she could. He managed to
hold his own gaze steady. It gave him a sense of somehow supporting her.

"But you," she said,--"you, of all people in the world, don't seem to
feel that way about it. You were there--waiting for me--before I even
tried to tell you. Oh, you do understand, don't you?"

"I think," he told her--and the smile that came with the words was
spontaneous enough, though it did feel rather tremulous--"I think I
could almost repeat the sentence you demolished young Stannard with in
your own words. But can't you see why it doesn't demolish me? It's
because I love you."

"So did he. So do father and Rush."

"Not you. Not quite you. Don't you see? It's just the thing I was trying
to tell you a while ago. What they insist on loving is--oh, partly you,
of course, but partly a sort of--projection of themselves that they call
you, dress you out in, try to compel you to fit. One can fight hard to
preserve an outlying bit of one's self like that. But there would be a
limit I should think. How your brother, with a letter like that in his
hands, could refuse to look at what you were trying to make him see ..."

"He had a theory, that began when we were in New York together as a sort
of joke, that I was a case of shell-shock. So whenever there has been
anything really uncomfortable to face, he has always had that to fall
back upon."

A momentary outburst of anger escaped him. "You've been tortured!" he
cried furiously. He reined in at once, however. "You've never, then," he
went on quietly, "been able to tell the story to any one. I'm sure you
didn't tell it to Graham Stannard. You didn't even try to."

She shook her head. The pitifulness of her, sitting there so spent, so
white, blurred his vision again with sudden tears. But after he had
disposed of them, he managed a smile and sat down comfortably in his
easy chair.

"You couldn't find a better person than me to tell it to," he said.

"You know already," she protested. "At least, you know what it comes to."

"I know the brute fact," he admitted, "but that and the whole truth are
seldom quite the same thing."

He saw the way her hands locked and twisted together and remembered with
a heart-arresting pang, her half-choked cry, "Don't! Don't hurt them like
that!" when his own had agonized in such a grip. But no caress of his
could help her now. He held himself still in his chair and waited.

"The whole truth of this story isn't any--prettier