sad until
now.

"I should have helped you," she went on. "I would have, only I had
come expecting . . . I thought to see----" Two days before when she
alighted from her father's car, her heart a tumult in her ears, she
could have told him perhaps. She could not tell him now. "I am not
used to such things," she finished weakly.

"I know," was all he replied, but the words were final, somehow. They
thrust her back, roughly, from any share in his thoughts. They ate
again in silence.

"Miriam would have helped," she forgot herself and argued aloud once.
"She would not have failed. But--blood sickens me, I think."

"It was neither a pretty nor prepossessing sight," he helped to excuse
her, but excuse nor pardon was not what she wanted.

"I told you that you would find out someday," she murmured. "I warned
you you would wake suddenly and see how shallow I am."

Until she had finished eating he would not talk. But she had finished
now. He faced her with an abruptness that startled her.

"Waking has been no sudden thing with me! I finished with dreams a
long time back, but you are what you have been always in my thoughts.
It's conditions I've waked to, not you!"

With unwitting gruffness he had sometimes spoken to her, but never with
constrained vehemence such as that.

"Why should I find fault in anything you have done, or failed to do?"
he demanded of both her and himself. "Why should you be apologetic or
regretful. Such a thing as I had to do two days ago has held no place
in your world, and never could, but I can't find it in myself to be
apologetic, either, because it is a part of mine. I meant to kill
him--wanted to kill him--because I was certain of your scorn! That was
vindictive; that was foolish for a man. But as for the rest of it--I
know I may have it all to do over again, any day. It was a vulgar
brawl to you; to me----"

"Not just a brawl," she contradicted quickly, anxious to be understood.
"Just--oh, so needlessly brutal. At first it left me only dazed and
nauseated, but after I had had time to think, I made myself see your
side of it. You must crush insubordination. And still it seems as
though there might have been a less horrible way."

"He had balked my work," he told her sternly. "He has fired upon me
from cover, when he dared not come out into the open. He has been
taking money for his work from a man who was bent on beating me at any
cost. Could I ask him please not