to be the man of mystery?"

How could I explain things? How could I make a commencement? And yet it
was just that which I had come to attempt.

"If I can explain at all," I said, very miserably, "it will be in one
word--madness."

"Is that all?" she questioned. In her eyes was the whimsical challenge
that had, on the previous occasion, swept me away from my moorings. The
question that I had asked myself once before came back to my mind. Could
it be that my goddess was so far from my ideal that, after all, what had
occurred needed no explanation? I would not admit such a possibility,
and yet her next words seemed to confirm it.

"When I first came here," she mused reflectively and only half-aloud,
"you stayed outside for an hour, and then you disappeared. Of course you
were a prisoner, but to-day you had the opportunity to see us. You
didn't--and yet--" she flushed deeply, and I knew that her thoughts too
were going back to the moment when I had, without words, avowed myself
so savagely.

"I stayed out there that night," I said bluntly, "because I could hardly
be an interloper, when you had ridden these infernal hills to be with
_him_--" I jerked my head savagely toward the bed. Then I went doggedly
on, determined that since she had forced me this far we should hereafter
stand in the certain light of understanding. "I also stayed out there
because, as it happens, I'm a fool. I couldn't endure witnessing a
reunion between yourself and your husband." It seemed to me that she
should first have called on me for other explanations.

At the last word her face clouded with an expression of absolute
bewilderment, and her eyes widened as she gazed at me.

"My--my _what_?" she demanded.

"Your husband," I repeated. "Mr. Weighborne."

She contemplated me as though I were a new and rather interesting
variety of maniac, then her laugh was long and delicious. Her clouded
eyes cleared and danced like skies in which the sun has suddenly burst
through rain.

"Oh," she said finally. "I understand now." Once more her face grew
grave and she added with a catch in her voice.

"And, thank God, I _do_ understand."

"For Heaven's sake," I implored, "tell me what you understand! As for
me, I understand nothing."

"Why, you totally unspeakable idiot," she explained, as though she had
known me always, and as though we had long been close comrades, "I
haven't any husband--yet. That's my brother. Didn't you know that?"

I stood at