ve done so afterward. Did you?"

She kept silent. But her eyes ran over him with contempt. According to
her, she had given him no right to put such questions.

He ignored it. It was undeserved. It was she who deserved contempt, not
he. And he threw it back at her in a strange incoherent outburst in
which, all the same, there was a vibrating note of gladness and relief.
And all the while, unmoved by the passion into which he broke, she
stood watching with a curious gravity his no longer immobile face. She
was thinking about Martin. She was redeveloping Martin's expression
when she had opened the door of her bedroom the night of her marriage
and let him out. What about her creed, then? Was she hiding behind
youthfulness? Were there, after all, certain things that must be paid
for? Was she already old enough to be what Alice and this man called
honest? Was every man made of the stuff that only gave for what he
hoped to get in return?

His words trailed off. He was wasting them, he saw. She was looking
through his head. But he rejoiced as to one thing like a potter who
opens the door of his oven and finds his masterpiece unbroken. And
silence fell upon them, interrupted only by the intermittent humming of
passing cars.

Finally Palgrave took the cigarette box out of Joan's hand and put it
down on a little table and stood looking more of a man than might have
been expected.

"I've always hoped that one day I should meet you--just you," he said
quietly; "and when I did, I knew that it would be to love. Well, I've
told you. Do what you can for me until you decide that you're grown up.
I'll wait."

And he turned and went away, and presently she heard a door shut and
echo, and slow footsteps in the street below.

Where was Martin?

VI

She wanted Martin. Everything that had happened that night made her
want Martin. He knew that she was a kid, and treated her as such. He
didn't stand up and try and force her forward into being a
woman--although, of all men, he had the right. He was big and generous
and had given her his name and house and the run of the world, but not
from his lips ever came the hard words that she had heard that night.
How extraordinary that they should have come from Alice as well as from
Gilbert.

She wanted Martin. Where was Martin? She felt more like a bird, at that
moment, than a butterfly--like a bird that had flown too far from its
nest and couldn't find its way back. She had been ho