t an abused
wife or anything like that. He's perfectly satisfied, as complacent as
an English gentleman can be in the enjoyment of possession. But he
doesn't love me any more than I love him. He blandly assumes that love
is only a polite term for something else. And I can't believe
that--yet. Maybe I'm what Archie Lawanne calls a romantic
sentimentalist, but there is something in me that craves from a man
more than elementary passion. I'm a woman; therefore my nature demands
of a man that he be first of all a man. But that alone isn't enough.
I'm not just a something to be petted when the fit is on and then told
in effect to run along and play. There must be men who have minds as
well as bodies. There must be here and there a man who understands
that a woman has all sorts of thoughts and feelings as well as sex.
Meanwhile--I mark time. That's all."

"You appear," Hollister said a little grimly, "to have acquired
certain definite ideas. It's a pity they didn't develop sooner."

"Ideas only develop out of experience," she said quietly. "And our
passions are born with us."

She rose, shaking free the snow that clung to her coat.

"I feel better for getting all that steam off my chest," she said.
"It's better, since we must live here, that you and I should not keep
up this game of pretence between ourselves. Isn't it, Robin?"

"Perhaps. I don't know." The old doubts troubled Hollister. He was
jealous of what he had attained, fearful of reviving the past, a
little uncertain of this new turn.

"At any rate, you don't hold a grudge against me, do you?" Myra asked.
"You can afford to be indifferent now. You've found a mate, you're
playing a man's part here. You're beating the game and getting some
real satisfaction out of living. You can afford to be above a grudge
against me."

"I don't hold any grudge," Hollister answered truthfully.

"I'm going down to the house, now," Myra said. "I wanted to talk to
you openly, and I'm glad I did. I think and think sometimes until I
feel like a rat in a trap. And you are the only one here I can really
talk to. You've been through the mill and you won't misunderstand."

"Ah," he said. "Is Charlie Mills devoid of understanding, or Lawanne?"

She looked at him fixedly for a second.

"You are very acute," she observed. "Some time I may tell you about
Charlie Mills. Certainly I'd never reveal my soul to Archie Lawanne.
He'd dissect it and gloat over it and analyze it in his next boo