her the name of
"Daphne" in their sweetheart days, because of that book of verse which
she had written at twenty-one, and which had brought her a momentary
fame.

"Going to sulk a bit--eh?" he now asked, with that self-conscious,
conciliatory little grin of his.

"No; it isn't sulkiness," said Sophy. "I'm only wondering how much you
really care?"

"I care a deuce of a lot, Daphne. 'Pon my soul I do."

"And you think such things as you said and--and did to me, the other
night, can be made all right by a 'beg pardon'?"

Chesney moved uneasily. His eyes slipped from under hers. He lit another
cigarette with elaborate care.

"Look here, Daphne," he said in a would-be bluff, frank tone. "What
_did_ I say ... and do? You know I get confoundedly blurry sometimes,
when one of these beastly attacks is coming on."

"You really don't remember?" Sophy asked, looking at him keenly. She saw
a slow red cloud his pale face.

"Well ... I've a hazy notion that I went for Gerald ... about those
pearls. Nasty things!" he broke off viciously. "Mere pretty
diseases--tumours--you know I loathe 'em."

Sophy had wondered many times what had become of her pearls after he had
strewn the floor with them. She said now:

"What have you done with them, Cecil?"

His shoulder went up crossly.

"Oh, they're safe enough," he said grudgingly. "I'll have 'em strung
over for you. Counted 'em this morning. They're all there. So you
haven't got _that_ against me."

Sophy sat looking down at her hands, and turning her wedding ring slowly
round and round. She had never thought that she could come to hate an
inanimate object as fiercely as she sometimes hated her wedding ring.
But to-day she did not hate it. It seemed a dreary little symbol of a
dreary fact that must be borne somehow, that was all. Suddenly she
lifted her eyes to his.

"I don't harbour things 'against you,' Cecil," she said. "The pearls
were the least of it all. It was the way you spoke of Gerald and that
... that loathsome book." Her look grew suddenly impassioned with
resentment. "Why should you wish to show me such a thing?" she asked
very low, and her voice trembled.

Chesney was deeply embarrassed again. He looked away from her, and that
slow red rose in his face.

"Oh--men are hell!" he said thickly. "You'd never really understand a
man, Sophy. There are abysms ... cess-pools in us."

He got up suddenly and flung himself on his knees beside her, hiding his
face in h