quickly, but left the sentence
unended.

His suspicions took shape, and he made a large, vague gesture of
dissent. "You heard all that was said," she continued, without paying
any heed to him. "You heard how ... how some one--no, how the man I
loved and trusted ... how he boasted about my caring for him; and not
only that, but how, before that drunken crowd, he told how I had been
to him ... to his room ... that afternoon----" She could not finish,
and pressed her knotted handkerchief to her lips.

Maurice looked round him for assistance. "You are mistaken," he
declared. "I heard nothing of the kind. Remember, I, too, was among
those ... in the state you mention," he added as an afterthought,
lowering his voice.

"That is not it." Leaning forward, she opened her eyes so wide that he
saw a rim of white round the brown of the pupils. "You must also have
heard ... how, all this time, behind my back, there was some one else
... someone he cared for ... when I thought it was only me."

The young man coloured, with her and for her. "It is not true; you have
been misled," he said with vehemence. And, again, a flash of intuition
suggested an afterthought to him. "Can you really believe it? Don't you
think better of him than that?"

For the first time since she had known him, Louise gave him a personal
look, a look that belonged to him alone, and held a warm ray of
gratitude. Then, however, she went on unsparingly: "I want you to tell
me who it was."

He laid his hat on a chair, and used his hands. "But if I assure you it
is not true? If I give you my word that you have been misinformed?"

"Who was it? What is her name?"

He rose, and went away from the table.

"I knew him better than you," she said slowly, as he did not speak:
"you or anyone else--a hundred thousand times better--and I KNOW it is
true."

Still he did not answer. "Then you won't tell me?"

"Tell you? How can I? There's nothing to tell."

"I was wrong then. You have no pity for me?"

"Pity!--I no pity?" he cried, forgetting how, a minute ago, she had
resented his feeling it. "But all the same I can't tell you what you
ask me. You don't realise what it means: putting a slur on a young
girl's name ... which has never been touched."

Directly he had said this, he was aware of his foolishness; but she let
the admission contained in the words pass unnoticed.

"Then she is not with him?" she cried, springing to her feet, and there
was a jubilation i