e window, across which the curtains had not yet been drawn.

He was leaning forward, his gaze intent and straight ahead out into the
black night beyond. His elbows were on his knees, and his hands were
clasped, and hanging between them. To the sympathetic heart of Nan
there was despair in every line of his attitude. She nerved herself to
carry out her decisions.

"Jeff!"

There was no movement in response. But a reply came. It was in the
tone of a man indifferent to everything but the thought teeming through
his brain.

"Well?"

"Why did you come around here--to-night?"

The question achieved its purpose. The man abandoned his attitude in a
movement of fierce resentment. He swung round on the questioner, his
eyes hot with feeling.

"Because I guess I need to sleep somewhere. Because nothing on earth
could make me share roof with the woman who's my wife. Gee, my wife!
Say, Nan, the thought of it nearly sets me crazy."

"Does it? You didn't feel that way--two nights ago."

The man's eyes met the girl's incredulously.

"How can you talk that way?" he demanded roughly. "I didn't know a
thing then. I thought she was all she seemed. Maybe I was just a
blind fool, crazy with love. Anyway--I hadn't learned the hell lying
around her heart."

"I s'pose there is hell lying around her heart?"

Nan's words were provocative. Yet they were spoke in such a tone of
simplicity as to rob them of all apparent intent.

Jeff was in no mood for patience. Swift resentment followed upon his
incredulous stare.

"Do you need me to give it you all again?" he cried fiercely. "It
don't need savvee to grip things." Then his voice rose. "And to think
those dollars have fed her, and clothed her, a body as fair as an
angel's, and a heart as foul as hell." Then his tone dropped as if he
were afraid of the sound of his own voice. "Say, thank God I kept my
hands off her. If she'd been a man----"

He left his sentence unfinished. In her mind Nan completed it. But
aloud she gave it another ending.

"If she'd been a man I don't guess she'd have been there to have you
lay hands on her."

There was a new note in the girl's tones. But it passed Jeff by.

"No," he said with almost foolish seriousness.

"Say, Jeff," the girl went on gently, a moment later, "aren't you
acting a teeny bit crazy over this? I mean talking of souls foul as
hell. And--an' not sharing the same roof with the woman you've sworn
to love,