h things to you, but
I can't help what they say."

He had a movement to catch her and hold her, but he kept himself off,
moved away from her, turning his back to her.

"You don't understand ... you don't understand," he repeated. "You
know nothing about men, Maggie, and you know nothing about me. I tell
you I wouldn't be faithful to you, and I'd be drunk sometimes, and I'd
have moods for days, when I'd just sulk and not speak to a soul. I
think those moods some damned sort of religion when I'm in them, but
what they really are is bad temper. You've got to know it, Maggie. I'd
be rotten to you, however much I wanted not to be."

"That's my own affair," she answered. "I can look after myself. And for
all the rest, I'm independent and I'll always be independent. I'll love
you whether you're good to me or bad."

"Well, then," he suddenly wheeled round to her, "you'd better have it
... I'm married already."

She took that with a little startled cry. Her eyes searched his face in
a puzzled fashion as though she were pursuing the truth. Then she said
like a child who sees some toy broken before its eyes:

"Oh, Martin!"

"Yes. Nobody knows--not a soul. It was a mad thing--four years ago in
Marseille I met a girl, a little dressmaker there. I went off my head
and married her, and then a month later she ran off with a merchant
chap, a Greek. I didn't care; we got on as badly as anything ... but
there you are. No one knows. That's the whole thing, Maggie. I thought
at first I wouldn't tell you. I was beginning to care for you too much,
as a matter of fact, and then when your uncle asked me to dinner, I
told myself I was a fool to go. Then when I saw how you trusted me, I
thought I'd be a cad and let it continue, but somehow ... you've got
an influence over me ... You've made me ashamed of things I wouldn't
have hesitated about a year ago. And the funny thing is it isn't your
looks. I can say things to you I couldn't to other women, and I'll tell
you right away that there are lots of women attract me more. And yet
I've never felt about any woman as I do about you, that I wanted to be
good to her and care for her and love her. It's always whether they
loved me that I've thought about ... Well, now I've told you, you see
that I'd better go, hadn't I? You see ... you see."

She looked up at him.

"I've got to think. It makes a difference, of course. Can we meet after
a week and talk again?"

"Much better if I don't see