say the awkward thing to
him--has he got his divorce?"

He looked at her, amazed.

"Don't you correspond?"

"Twice a year, perhaps."

Dean Silver flung away his cigarette, and sunk his hands in his pockets.

"Certainly he's divorced," he said briefly.

Martie's heart thumped. The flowers in her hands, she stood staring
away from him, unseeing.

"I hope you'll forgive me--I feel like a fool touching the thing at
all," Dean Silver said, after a silence. "But I thought that there was
some sort of an understanding between you."

"Oh, no!" Martie half-whispered, with a fluttered breath.

"There isn't?" he asked, in a tone of keen protest.

"Oh, no!"

The novelist whistled a few notes and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, then, there isn't," he said philosophically. He stooped to pick
a fragrant spike of mignonette, and put it in his buttonhole. When he
began speaking again, he did not look at Martie. "A few of us have come
to know Dryden well, this winter," he said gravely. "He's a rare
fellow, Mrs. Bannister--a big man, and he's got his field to himself.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you what a fuss they've been making
over him--back there, and how little it matters to him. He's going a
long way. You--you've got to be kind to him, my dear girl."

"I'm a Catholic, and he's a divorced man," Martie said, turning
troubled eyes toward him. "I never thought of him in that way!"

Dean Silver raised his eyebrows.

"People are still believing that sort of thing, are they?"

"Only about a hundred million!" she answered, drily in her turn.

The man laughed shortly.

"Sweet complication!" he observed.

"More than that," Martie said hurriedly, "I'm engaged to be married to
the president of the bank here, in about six weeks!"

Their eyes met steadily for a full minute.

"I devoutly trust you are not serious?" said Dean Silver then.

"Oh, but I am!" she said, with a nervous laugh.

For answer he merely shrugged his shoulders again. In silence they
turned toward the house.

"That is an actual settled fact, is it?" Silver asked, when they were
at the steps.

"Why, yes!" Martie answered, feeling a strange inclination toward
tears. "I've been here for a year and a half," she added lamely. "I've
not seen John--I tell you I never thought of him as anything but
Adele's husband! And Clifford--the man I am to marry--is a good man,
and it means a home for life for my boy and me--and it means the
greatest pleasure