wane?"

He tried to brave it out.

"And why did it 'wane,' as you call it? Can a man be snubbed day in, day
out, and yet keep at concert pitch forever?"

"You mean that I would not respond to you when you had been drinking?"

"Well--put it that way."

Sophy gave a tired sigh.

"Why must we go over it and over it?" she asked. "It is not me that you
want, Morris--it is your own way. You never want what is yours--only
what is out of reach. You have turned on Belinda now, only because she
came to you too easily. If I came back to you--you would not want me any
longer."

He sneered.

"It's easy to say what I would or wouldn't do. It's easy to arraign me.
But what of yourself? I thought you were so great on unselfishness!
Where's the unselfishness in all this, I'd like to know?"

"I'm not trying to be unselfish, Morris. I've been unselfish so long
that I've nearly lost my best self. I find it's better to keep one's
best self than to be selfless."

He looked startled at this heresy against the great Credo of
Man's-Ideal-Woman.

"Good Lord!... You _have_ changed!" he said, in blank dismay. "It
doesn't seem to be you talking...."

"It's a 'me' that you don't know, perhaps...."

"I certainly don't know this side of you."

"It isn't a side of me--it's the core of me."

They were both silent again. Loring was the first to take it up.

"Look here ... have you spoken to Judge Macon and your sister about all
this?"

"Yes."

He reddened angrily.

"A pleasant position for me, isn't it?"

"It's odious for both of us, Morris," she said, with feeling.

"Did you tell them about ... about...?"

He couldn't bring it out.

"I told them about you and Belinda. I didn't tell them ... that other
thing. I couldn't tell any one that...."

"Oh ... thanks!" he sneered.

Sophy flashed out:

"It wasn't for your sake I didn't tell them--it was for my own!"

He looked staggered. He was so used to her forbearance and gentleness
that he could almost have believed in the old tales of "possession." It
was as though Sophy's body had become "possessed" by a strange, heretic
spirit that denied all her former religion of abnegation in one strange
speech after the other. He was humiliatingly at a loss in dealing with
this new, essential Sophy. He felt something as the Miltonian Adam might
have felt if his docile Eve had announced her intention of leaving him
and Eden in the companionship of the serpent. Indeed, these new ideas