have trained him
to demand you all the time and all of you? How would you manage
Bill--and--and other claims?"

And if there is a contagious thing in this world it is embarrassment. I
never felt anything worse in all my life than the shame that swept over
me in a great hot wave when that look came into his eyes and made me
realise just exactly what I had been saying to him, about what, and how
I had said it. I stood perfectly still, shook all over like a leaf, and
wondered if I would ever be able to raise my eyes from the ground. A
dizzy nauseated feeling for myself rose up in me against myself, and I
was just about to turn on my heels and leave him, I hoped for ever, when
he came over and laid his hand on my shoulder.

"Molly," he said in a voice that might have come down from heaven on
dove wings, "you can't for a moment feel or think that I don't realise
and appreciate what you have been to the motherless little chap, and for
life I am yours at command, as he is. I really thought it would be a
relief to you to have him taken away from you for a little while just
now, and I still think it is best; but not unless you consent. You shall
have him back whenever you are ready for him, and at all times both he
and I are at your service to the whole of our kingdoms. Just think the
matter over, won't you, and decide what you want me to do?"

Something in me died for ever, I think, when he spoke to me like that.
He's not like other men, and there aren't any other men on earth but
him! All the rest are just nowhere. And I'm not anything myself. There's
no excuse for my living, and I wish I wasn't so healthy and likely to go
on doing it. It was all over, and there was nothing left for me to live
for, and before I could stop myself I buried my face in my hands.

"Billy asked me to go with him on this awful whale-hunt!" I sobbed
out to comfort myself with the thought that somebody did care for me,
regardless of just how I was further embarrassing and complicating
myself in the affairs of the two men I had thought I owned and was now
finding out that I had to give up. I wish I had been looking at him,
for I felt him start, but he said in his big friendly voice that is so
much--and never enough for me--

"Well, why not you and Alfred come along and make it a family party, if
that is what suits Bill, the boss?"

If men would just make an end of women's hearts in a businesslike way,
it would be so much kinder of them. Why do the