ay her.

"I suppose,"--the words were almost inaudible, yet he heard them,--"I
suppose that is because you have lived so long in France."

"What, Electra?" He spoke absently, his mind with Rose.

"These things have ceased to mean anything to you. It is not a moral
question. You see the woman is pretty and you--"

"No, no! She is beautiful, but that's not it. I can't theorize about it,
Electra, only the whole thing seems to me monstrous. That he should
wrong her! That he should be able to make her care about him in the
first place--a fellow like him--just because he was handsome as the
devil and had the tongue of angels--but that he should wrong her, that
she should come over here expecting kindness--" It was Peter who put a
hand before his eyes, not because there were tears there, but as if to
shut her out from a knowledge of his too candid self. But in an instant
he was looking at her again, not in anger, but sorrowfully.

"Isn't it strange?" she exclaimed, almost to herself.

"What, Electra?"

"Strange to think what power a woman has--a woman of that stamp."

"Don't, Electra. You mustn't classify her. You can't."

She was considering it with a real curiosity.

"You don't blame her at all," she said. "You know Tom did wrong. You
don't think she did."

"Electra," he said gently, "we can't go back to that. It's over and done
with. Besides, it is between those two. It isn't our business."

"You could blame Tom!" She clung to that. He saw she would not release
her hold.

"Electra!" He put out his hands and took her unwilling ones. Then he
gazed at her sweetly and seriously; and when Peter was in gentle
earnest, he did look very good. "Electra, can't you see what she is?"

His appealingness had for the instant soothed that angry devil in her.
She wrenched her hands free, with the one hoarse cry instinct with
mental pain,--

"You are in love with her!"

Peter stepped back a pace. His face paled. He could not answer. Electra
felt the rush of an emotion stronger than herself. It swept her on, her
poise forgotten, her rules of life snapping all about her.

"I have always known it, from the first day you spoke of her. She has
bewitched you. Perhaps this is what she really came for--to separate us.
Well, she has done it."

Something seemed demanded of him, and he could only answer in her own
words,--

"Has she done it?"

Her heat had cooled. Her soberer self had the upper hand again, and she
spoke now li