know girls are not quite as unsophisticated as they used to be.
Are you surprised that such an idea should occur to her?"

His own color answered hers: it was the only reply that came to him.

Mrs. Vervain went on, smoothly: "I supposed it might have struck you
that there were times when we presented that appearance."

He made an impatient gesture. "A man's past is his own!"

"Perhaps--it certainly never belongs to the woman who has shared it.
But one learns such truths only by experience; and Miss Gaynor is
naturally inexperienced."

"Of course--but--supposing her act a natural one--" he floundered
lamentably among his innuendoes--"I still don't see--how there was
anything--"

"Anything to take hold of? There wasn't--"

"Well, then--?" escaped him, in crude satisfaction; but as she did not
complete the sentence he went on with a faltering laugh: "She can
hardly object to the existence of a mere friendship between us!"

"But she does," said Mrs. Vervain.

Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no trace
of jealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still hear the
candid ring of the girl's praise of Mrs. Vervain. If she were such an
abyss of insincerity as to dissemble distrust under such frankness, she
must at least be more subtle than to bring her doubts to her rival for
solution. The situation seemed one through which one could no longer
move in a penumbra, and he let in a burst of light with the direct
query: "Won't you explain what you mean?"

Mrs. Vervain sat silent, not provokingly, as though to prolong his
distress, but as if, in the attenuated phraseology he had taught her,
it was difficult to find words robust enough to meet his challenge. It
was the first time he had ever asked her to explain anything; and she
had lived so long in dread of offering elucidations which were not
wanted, that she seemed unable to produce one on the spot.

At last she said slowly: "She came to find out if you were really free."

Thursdale colored again. "Free?" he stammered, with a sense of physical
disgust at contact with such crassness.

"Yes--if I had quite done with you." She smiled in recovered security.
"It seems she likes clear outlines; she has a passion for definitions."

"Yes--well?" he said, wincing at the echo of his own subtlety.

"Well--and when I told her that you had never belonged to me, she
wanted me to define _my_ status--to know exactly where I had stood all
along."