you."

His voice was slow and sad; the whole sadness of it all, all the sadness
of a world in which men and women loved and hurt each other seemed
closing in around him. He did not seem able to rise out of it, to go out
to her; it was as if his new disappointment brought back all the hurt of
old ones.

Young, all inexperienced in the ways of adjusting love to life, of
saving it for life, the love in her tried to shoot through the self-love
that closed her in, holding her tight. She wanted to follow that
impulse, go over and put her arms around her husband, let her kisses
drive away that look of sadness. She knew that she could do it, that she
ought to do it, that she would be sorry for not having done it, but--she
couldn't. Love did not know how to fight its way through pride.

He had risen. "I must go. I have a number of calls to make. I--I'm sorry
you feel as you do, Amy."

He was not going to explain! He was just leaving her outside it all! He
didn't care for her, really, at all--just took her because he couldn't
get that other woman! Took _her_--Amy Forrester--because he couldn't get
the woman he wanted! Great bands of incensed pride bound her heart now,
closing in the love that had fluttered there. Her face, twisted with
varying emotions, was fairly ugly as she cried: "Well, I must say, I
wish you had told me this before we were married!"

He looked at her in surprise. Then, surprised anew, looked quickly away.
Feeling that he had failed, he tried to put it aside lightly. "Oh, come
now, Amy, you didn't think, did you, that you could marry a man of
thirty-four who had never loved any woman?"

"I should like to think he had loved a respectable woman!" she cried,
wounded anew by this lightness, unable to hold back things she miserably
knew she would be sorry she had not held back. "And if he had loved that
kind of a woman--_did_ love her--I should like to think he had too much
respect for his wife to ask her to meet such a person!"

"Ruth Holland is not a woman to speak like that about, Amy," he said
with unconcealed anger.

"She's not a decent woman! She's not a respectable woman! She's a bad
woman! She's a low woman!"

She could not hold it back. She knew she looked unlovely, knew she was
saying things that would not make her loved. She could not help it.
Deane turned away from her. After a minute he got a little control of
himself and instead of the hot things that had flashed up, said coldly:
"I don't t