However, that's past. I have
got a start. Unless this skeleton is dragged out of the closet, I
shall get on well enough."

"I shall not drag it out, Robin," she assured him with a faint smile.
"Some day I hope I'll be able to give you back that money."

"What became of it?" He voiced a question which had been recurring in
his mind for a year. "You must have had over forty thousand dollars
when I was reported dead in '17."

Myra shrugged her shoulders.

"We were married six months after that. Jim has some rather well-to-do
people over there. They were all very nice to me. I imagine they
thought he was marrying money. Perhaps he thought so himself. He had
nothing except a quarterly pittance. He has no sense of values, and I
was not much better. There is always this estate which he will come
into, to discount the present. He had seen service the first year of
the war. He was wounded and invalided home. Then he served as a
military instructor. Finally, when the Americans came in, he was
allowed to resign. So we came across to the States. We went here and
there, spending as we went. We cut a pretty wide swath too, most of
the time. There were several disastrous speculations. Presently the
money was all gone. Then we came up here, where we can live on next to
nothing. We shall have to stay here another eighteen months. Looking
back, the way we spent money seems sheer lunacy. The fool and his
money--you know. And it wasn't our money. That hurts me now. I've
begun to realize what money means to me, to you, to every one. That's
why when Jim calmly told me that he had borrowed a hundred dollars
from you I felt that was a little more than I could stand. That's
piling it on. I wondered why you gave it to him--if you let him have
it in a spirit of contemptuous charity. I might have known it wasn't
that. But don't lend him any more. He really doesn't need it.
Borrowing with Jim is just like asking for a smoke. He's queer. If he
made a bet with you and lost he'd pay up promptly, if he had to pawn
his clothes and mine too. Borrowed money, however, seems to come in a
different category. When this estate comes into his hands perhaps I
shall be able to return some of this money that we wasted. I think
that--and the fact that I'm just a little afraid to break away and
face the world alone--is chiefly what keeps me faithful to him now."

"Is it as bad as that?" Hollister asked.

"Don't misunderstand me, Robin," she protested. "I'm no