e cried.

"He--he is the man who married me," she answered unsteadily. "It
was--just Monte who married me--honest, easy-going, care-free Monte, who
is willing to do a woman a favor even to the extent of marrying her. He
is very honest and very gallant and very normal. He likes one day to be
as another. He does n't wish to be stirred up. He asked me this, Peter:
'Is n't it possible to care without caring too much?' And I said, 'Yes.'
That was why he married me. He had seen others who cared a great deal,
and they frightened him. They cared so much that they made themselves
uncomfortable, and he feared that."

"Good Lord, you call that man Covington?" exclaimed Peter.

"No--just Monte," Marjory answered quickly. "It's just the outside of
him. The man you call Covington--the man inside--is another man."

"It's the real man," declared Peter.

"Yes," she nodded, with a catch in her voice. "That's the real man.
But--don't you understand?--it was n't that man who married me. It was
Monte who married me to escape Covington. He trusted me not to disturb
the real man, just as I trusted him not to disturb the real me."

Peter leaned forward with a new hope in his eyes.

"Then," he said, "perhaps, after all, he did n't get to the real you."

Quite simply she replied:--

"He did, Peter. He does not know it, but he did."

"You are sure?"

She knew the pain she was causing him, but she answered:--

"Yes. I could n't admit that to any one else in the world but you--and
it hurts you, Peter."

"It hurts like the devil," he said.

She placed her hand upon his.

"Poor Peter," she said gently.

"It hurts like the devil, but it's nothing for you to pity me for," he
put in quickly. "I'd rather have the hurt from you than nothing."

"You feel like that?" she asked earnestly.

"Yes."

"Then," she said, "you must understand how, even with me, the joy and the
grief are one?"

"Yes, I understand that. Only if he knew--"

"He'd come back to me, you're going to say again. And I tell you again,
I won't have him come back, kind and gentle and smiling. If he came back
now,--if it were possible for him really to come to me,--I 'd want him to
ache with love. I 'd want him to be hurt with love."

She was talking fiercely, with a wild, unrestrained passion such as Peter
had never seen in any woman.

"I 'd want," she hurried on, out of all control of herself--"I'd want
everything I don't want him to give--ever