d the papers in the trenches."

"Did they call her something?" She was gazing at him intently. "Was it
something brutal that you wouldn't like to tell me?"

"It was something true," he said, pinching out his cigarette with quiet
fierceness.

"Oh, I don't know----" She broke off to ask the waitress whether the car
had arrived and was answered in the affirmative. "I don't know about its
being true. After all, she made three men happy before they went West.
I don't see that she'd have been any more to be admired if she'd allowed
the last two to go wretched."

Tabs half-rose and then reseated himself. "An awful woman! Insatiable! A
Lucrezia Borgia, without Lucrezia Borgia's excuse."

"I knew you'd say that." Terry spoke hopelessly in a tone that dragged.
"How do you or I know what excuses she had? How do we know why anybody
does anything--what hidden reasons they have? And yet we're always so
eager to condemn! I wanted to be the first to let you know about Adair
because you always used to understand. You would have understood if
you'd been the _you_ that you were. I thought that if I explained to you
about Maisie---- But what's the use!"

She rose from her chair and stood leaning against the table, looking
wilted and pathetic. When she spoke again the heat had gone out of her
words and was replaced by an appealing tenderness. "Don't you see what
it is--why it is that I don't condemn? I'm so sorry for them--so sorry
for you, for myself, for everybody. It hurts me here, Tabs." She laid
her hand against her breast. "We all want what we've spent in the lost
years. We want it so impatiently. We can't get it; but we want it at
once--_now_. The things one wants are always in the past or the future,
so one cheats to get them _now_."

He hadn't the remotest idea what she was trying to tell him. She was
stirred by some deep emotion--some overwhelming loneliness. For a moment
it crossed his mind that she also was tempted--fascinated by some
lurement of dishonor kindred to Adair's. He put the thought from him as
preposterous and disloyal. Yet it recurred. Ever since they had met she
had been talking curiously--talking about having given away bits of
herself to people who were hungry, little bits of herself in wrong
directions. She had coupled her own case with this unspeakable Maisie's.
What was her problem?

She stood there with her head bowed, like a child self-accused of
wrong-doing, with all the flaunting joy of spring tap