e for me at all?"

"How can you ask that?" she demanded, reproachfully, feeling that she
had been rather foolish in confessing. Perhaps she would lose him now,
and she did not want to do that. Because his eyes blazed with a
jealous hardness she burst into tears. "Oh, I wish I had never told
you! There is nothing to tell, anyhow. I never wanted to."

Cowperwood was nonplussed. He knew human nature pretty well, and woman
nature; his common sense told him that this girl was not to be trusted,
and yet he was drawn to her. Perhaps she was not lying, and these
tears were real.

"And you positively assure me that this was all--that there wasn't any
one else before, and no one since?"

Stephanie dried her eyes. They were in his private rooms in Randolph
Street, the bachelor rooms he had fitted for himself as a changing
place for various affairs.

"I don't believe you care for me at all," she observed, dolefully,
reproachfully. "I don't believe you understand me. I don't think you
believe me. When I tell you how things are you don't understand. I
don't lie. I can't. If you are so doubting now, perhaps you had
better not see me any more. I want to be frank with you, but if you
won't let me--"

She paused heavily, gloomily, very sorrowfully, and Cowperwood surveyed
her with a kind of yearning. What an unreasoning pull she had for him!
He did not believe her, and yet he could not let her go.

"Oh, I don't know what to think," he commented, morosely. "I certainly
don't want to quarrel with you, Stephanie, for telling me the truth.
Please don't deceive me. You are a remarkable girl. I can do so much
for you if you will let me. You ought to see that."

"But I'm not deceiving you," she repeated, wearily. "I should think
you could see."

"I believe you," he went on, trying to deceive himself against his
better judgment. "But you lead such a free, unconventional life."

"Ah," thought Stephanie, "perhaps I talk too much."

"I am very fond of you. You appeal to me so much. I love you, really.
Don't deceive me. Don't run with all these silly simpletons. They are
really not worthy of you. I shall be able to get a divorce one of
these days, and then I would be glad to marry you."

"But I'm not running with them in the sense that you think. They're
not anything to me beyond mere entertainment. Oh, I like them, of
course. Lane Cross is a dear in his way, and so is Gardner Knowles.
They have all been nice