e he leaned back, raising his face to her, his legs thrust
out a trifle wearily and his hands grasping either side of the seat.
They had beaten against the wind, and she was still fresh; they had
beaten against the wind, and he, as at the best the more battered
vessel, perhaps just vaguely drooped. But the effect of their silence
was that she appeared to beckon him on, and he might have been fairly
alongside of her when, at the end of another minute, he found their
word. "The only thing is that, as for ever putting up again with your
pretending that you're selfish--!"

At this she helped him out with it. "You won't take it from me?"

"I won't take it from you."

"Well, of course you won't, for that's your way. It doesn't matter, and
it only proves--! But it doesn't matter, either, what it proves. I'm at
this very moment," she declared, "frozen stiff with selfishness."

He faced her awhile longer in the same way; it was, strangely, as if, by
this sudden arrest, by their having, in their acceptance of the unsaid,
or at least their reference to it, practically given up pretending--it
was as if they were "in" for it, for something they had been ineffably
avoiding, but the dread of which was itself, in a manner, a seduction,
just as any confession of the dread was by so much an allusion. Then
she seemed to see him let himself go. "When a person's of the nature you
speak of there are always other persons to suffer. But you've just been
describing to me what you'd take, if you had once a good chance, from
your husband."

"Oh, I'm not talking about my husband!"

"Then whom, ARE you talking about?"

Both the retort and the rejoinder had come quicker than anything
previously exchanged, and they were followed, on Maggie's part, by a
momentary drop. But she was not to fall away, and while her companion
kept his eyes on her, while she wondered if he weren't expecting her to
name his wife then, with high hypocrisy, as paying for his daughter's
bliss, she produced something that she felt to be much better. "I'm
talking about YOU."

"Do you mean I've been your victim?"

"Of course you've been my victim. What have you done, ever done, that
hasn't been FOR me?"

"Many things; more than I can tell you--things you've only to think of
for yourself. What do you make of all that I've done for myself?"

"'Yourself'?--" She brightened out with derision.

"What do you make of what I've done for American City?"

It took her but a