e _got_ to keep more or less apart."

"Yes, Lucy."

I held out my arms, and for a moment we made, I suppose, one of those
intolerable pictures that hung in Fulton's mental gallery. And then I
went away.

It was good to have told. I was very deeply in love; I thought that
Lucy's and my future could soon be smoothed into shape, but I did not
feel happy. I felt as if I had been through a great ordeal of some
sort, and had come off second best. It seemed to me that I ought to
have stood up more loudly for my love, for its intensity and power to
endure.

In addition there had been about John Fulton an ominous quiet. I could
better have endured a violent outbreak. For there is no action without
its reaction. After a storm there is calm. But Fulton's calm was more
like that which precedes a storm.

His breakdown came after I had left. Lucy told me about it. He had
come back to her in the living-room, and said things about me that she
would never never forgive.

"I don't care what he says about me," she cried, "but if he talks to me
against you, I won't stand it."

"It's natural for him to feel bitter against me. I'm sorry, of course.
But it doesn't matter."

"If he's got to feel bitter, let him feel bitter against me. If anyone
is to blame, I am to blame."

"What did he say about me?" I asked.

"He said you were the kind of man that men didn't count when they were
counting up the number of men they knew. He said you had always been
too idle to keep out of mischief. And that no pretty woman would be
safe from you--if you weren't afraid . . . Afraid!"

"That's quite an indictment."

"I said: 'Why didn't you say all that to his face, when he was here,
instead of waiting till you could say it behind his back . . .'"

Here she turned to me with the most wonderful look of tenderness and
trust.

"But I know what I know. And you are the kindest and the truest and
the gentlest man . . ."

"Oh, I'm not! I'm not, Lucy! . . . But what does that matter, if I
never let you find out the difference? . . . We mustn't take what John
says too seriously. He's had enough trouble to warp his mind."

She still looked up into my face with that wonderful trust and
tenderness. "And you are the most generous man to another man!" she
said.

XXVIII

The very next day Evelyn told a few old friends that she was going to
be married to Dawson Cooper. At once Lucy felt that she must give a
dinner in the hap