changed. That seemed reasonable. What was so
queer was how he treated me like a kid. Rather an intelligent kid, you
know. He said: 'Did you, at school, Louis, have the lamp and orange and
hatpin trick to explain night and day to you?' I said yes, and it all
came back to me, being a kid in school and under orders, you know. And
he said: 'Suppose your master had jabbed the hatpin just anywhere,
nowhere near the centre--how the orange would have wobbled, wouldn't
it?' I said it would, and he went on to say the hatpin wasn't jabbed
through my centre, and that's why _I_ wobbled so much. That was very
reasonable, too--but I told him I didn't see how the hatpin was going to
be pulled out. Yet all the time I listened to him, sort of fascinated by
a charm he has--seems a ridiculous thing to say about a man, doesn't
it?"

"No--not a bit," she said faintly.

"He seemed to care a lot about me. No one but you ever had. And then he
asked me if I realized what a thin time you had of it. 'Does it ever
occur to you, Louis, that your wife has had a superhuman job? And she's
only a girl after all. You know what women are,' he said. They pretend
to us that they're so very strong and independent. Like a child trying
to lift a great weight, and saying: 'No, no--you shan't help. I can do
it,' and in the same minute dropping it on his toes with a smash and
coming to be comforted! Marcella's like that. She's brave. But she's got
to the cracking stage now. She's got to be taken care of. I didn't
believe it. It seemed incongruous."

"After what I'd just told you?"

"Yes. I've always, even as a kid, been such a liar that when anyone was
brutally honest I thought they were posing. Kraill said, 'You'll never
be fit to take care of her. You're just a parasite. She's coming away
with me now.' That squared with what I'd thought of your brutal honesty.
I thought it was a blind, and that you were just coming back to fetch
Andrew and then go. I wasn't cross with Kraill then. I simply crumpled
up."

There was a long silence. When he spoke again he spoke as though sharing
a secret with her.

"Do you know, I believe Kraill was playing with us both, Marcella? I
believe he'd gauged you right, and me too. I believe he made love to
you, knowing your cussed pride. He knew you'd turn to me, and that your
turning to me would save me. I believe he was bluffing when he said he
was going to take you. You never know, with men like that. Biology and
psychology--