s a pleasant thing to look at." He broke off, and then began
again: "Don't think this a plea for myself! I don't want to say a word
to lessen my offense. I don't want to talk of myself at all. Even if I
did, I probably couldn't make you understand--I don't, myself, as I look
back. Be just to me--it's your right; all I ask you is to be generous to
Miss Viner..."

She stood up trembling. "You're free to be as generous to her as you
please!"

"Yes: you've made it clear to me that I'm free. But there's nothing I
can do for her that will help her half as much as your understanding her
would."

"Nothing you can do for her? You can marry her!"

His face hardened. "You certainly couldn't wish her a worse fate!"

"It must have been what she expected...relied on..." He was silent, and
she broke out: "Or what is she? What are you? It's too horrible! On your
way here...to ME..." She felt the tears in her throat and stopped.

"That was it," he said bluntly. She stared at him.

"I was on my way to you--after repeated delays and postponements of your
own making. At the very last you turned me back with a mere word--and
without explanation. I waited for a letter; and none came. I'm not
saying this to justify myself. I'm simply trying to make you understand.
I felt hurt and bitter and bewildered. I thought you meant to give me
up. And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to be sorry for, to be
of use to. That, I swear to you, was the way it began. The rest was a
moment's folly...a flash of madness...as such things are. We've never
seen each other since..."

Anna was looking at him coldly. "You sufficiently describe her in saying
that!"

"Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is what you
always declare you never do."

"Conventional standards? A girl who----" She was checked by a sudden
rush of almost physical repugnance. Suddenly she broke out: "I always
thought her an adventuress!"

"Always?"

"I don't mean always...but after you came..."

"She's not an adventuress."

"You mean that she professes to act on the new theories? The stuff that
awful women rave about on platforms?"

"Oh, I don't think she pretended to have a theory----"

"She hadn't even that excuse?"

"She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness--of miseries and
humiliations that a woman like you can't even guess. She had nothing to
look back to but indifference or unkindness--nothing to look forward to
but anxiety. She sa