n commonplace, you'd have killed
them with driving. You'd have managed some way to live twenty times as
much as the people around you."

Fred paused. He sought along the shadowy ceiling and heavy mouldings for
words. When he began again, his voice was lower, and at first he spoke
with less conviction, though again it grew on him. "Now I knew all
this--oh, knew it better than I can ever make you understand! You've
been running a handicap. You had no time to lose. I wanted you to have
what you need and to get on fast--get through with me, if need be; I
counted on that. You've no time to sit round and analyze your conduct or
your feelings. Other women give their whole lives to it. They've nothing
else to do. Helping a man to get his divorce is a career for them; just
the sort of intellectual exercise they like."

Fred dived fiercely into his pockets as if he would rip them out and
scatter their contents to the winds. Stopping before her, he took a deep
breath and went on again, this time slowly. "All that sort of thing is
foreign to you. You'd be nowhere at it. You haven't that kind of mind.
The grammatical niceties of conduct are dark to you. You're simple--and
poetic." Fred's voice seemed to be wandering about in the thickening
dusk. "You won't play much. You won't, perhaps, love many times." He
paused. "And you did love me, you know. Your railroad friend would have
understood me. I COULD have thrown you back. The reverse was there,--it
stared me in the face,--but I couldn't pull it. I let you drive ahead."
He threw out his hands. What Thea noticed, oddly enough, was the flash
of the firelight on his cuff link. He turned again. "And you'll always
drive ahead," he muttered. "It's your way."

There was a long silence. Fred had dropped into a chair. He seemed,
after such an explosion, not to have a word left in him. Thea put her
hand to the back of her neck and pressed it, as if the muscles there
were aching.

"Well," she said at last, "I at least overlook more in you than I do in
myself. I am always excusing you to myself. I don't do much else."

"Then why, in Heaven's name, won't you let me be your friend? You make a
scoundrel of me, borrowing money from another man to get out of my
clutches."

"If I borrow from him, it's to study. Anything I took from you would be
different. As I said before, you'd be keeping me."

"Keeping! I like your language. It's pure Moonstone, Thea,--like your
point of view. I wonder how l