ong you'll be a Methodist." He turned away
bitterly.

"Well, I've never said I wasn't Moonstone, have I? I am, and that's why
I want Dr. Archie. I can't see anything so funny about Moonstone, you
know." She pushed her chair back a little from the hearth and clasped
her hands over her knee, still looking thoughtfully into the red coals.
"We always come back to the same thing, Fred. The name, as you call it,
makes a difference to me how I feel about myself. You would have acted
very differently with a girl of your own kind, and that's why I can't
take anything from you now. You've made everything impossible. Being
married is one thing and not being married is the other thing, and
that's all there is to it. I can't see how you reasoned with yourself,
if you took the trouble to reason. You say I was too much alone, and yet
what you did was to cut me off more than I ever had been. Now I'm going
to try to make good to my friends out there. That's all there is left
for me."

"Make good to your friends!" Fred burst out. "What one of them cares as
I care, or believes as I believe? I've told you I'll never ask a
gracious word from you until I can ask it with all the churches in
Christendom at my back."

Thea looked up, and when she saw Fred's face, she thought sadly that he,
too, looked as if things were spoiled for him. "If you know me as well
as you say you do, Fred," she said slowly, "then you are not being
honest with yourself. You know that I can't do things halfway. If you
kept me at all--you'd keep me." She dropped her head wearily on her hand
and sat with her forehead resting on her fingers.

Fred leaned over her and said just above his breath, "Then, when I get
that divorce, you'll take it up with me again? You'll at least let me
know, warn me, before there is a serious question of anybody else?"

Without lifting her head, Thea answered him. "Oh, I don't think there
will ever be a question of anybody else. Not if I can help it. I suppose
I've given you every reason to think there will be,--at once, on
shipboard, any time."

Ottenburg drew himself up like a shot. "Stop it, Thea!" he said sharply.
"That's one thing you've never done. That's like any common woman." He
saw her shoulders lift a little and grow calm. Then he went to the other
side of the room and took up his hat and gloves from the sofa. He came
back cheerfully. "I didn't drop in to bully you this afternoon. I came
to coax you to go out for tea with me