deceived than it was right for me. I shall tell
you."

"Don't tell me anything she wouldn't wish," said Peter earnestly. He
began to see the need of holding down the flaming spirit in her, lest it
consume too much. "If there is anything she wants me to know, she will
tell me."

"My instinct was right," said Electra, now with equal steadiness. "She
was not his wife. Tom never married her."

Peter was tired of that issue. His controlled manner showed it.

"I know what you think about that, Electra," he said. "You see we don't
agree. We mustn't talk about it."

Electra answered him with a gracious certainty.

"That was what she told me, Peter. She told grandmother, too. For some
reason she has abandoned her deception. She has a reason for ending it.
That was what she said. Tom never married her."

Peter's face was blazing, the indignant blood in it, the light darting
from his eyes. He straightened. His hands clenched. His voice was thick
with anger.

"Tom never married her?"

"That was what she told us."

"The damned scoundrel!"

Electra had been regarding him in serene certainty of her own position
and her ability to hold it. But human nature flashed out in her, the
loyalty of blood.

"Are you speaking of my brother?" she demanded.

"I am speaking of your precious brother. And I might have known it."
Ire, gathering in him, suffused his face anew. "I might have known Tom
Fulton would do the dastardly trick in any given situation. Of course he
never married her."

"You don't seem to think of her," she reminded him, under her breath.

"Not think of her! What else am I thinking of? Poor child! poor child!"

Electra was always having to feel alone in the world. Art left her
desolate when other people sang and painted and she could only praise.
Love and the fierce loyalty she coveted were always failing her and
lavishing themselves elsewhere. She had one momentary impulse to speak
for herself.

"Do you wonder now," she said, "that I wouldn't accept her."

"Not accept her, when she had been hurt? Good God, Electra! how
monstrous it is. You, a delicate woman, fully believed he had wronged
another woman as lovely as yourself, and yet the only impression it made
on you was that you could not accept her."

Electra resisted the impulse to turn away or put her hands to her face;
the tears were coming. She held herself rigid for a moment, choking down
the shuddering of her nerves, lest her lips quiver and betr