"I'm well," he said, "and how are you? Certainly you are looking well."

"I am not ill. I think I am not plumper nor more thin than usual. I
imagine my weight is normal."

He laughed.

"And how much is that?"

The woman flushed a little.

"It is hardly worth the telling, since you do not remember. There was
a time, you know, when you had some whim about it, and when I had to
report to you. You professed to be solicitous about my health or
personal appearance, or whatever it was that led you to the demand.
And you have forgotten."

He was uneasy. "That is true, Ada. I did have that fad, didn't I?
Well, I forget the figures, but I see that you are still yourself, and
as you should be."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Take the big chair. It's the one you
like best. You see I don't forget certain trifles" (this with a slight
trembling inflection). "And tell me about yourself. I haven't seen
you for three months and over. Haven't you been out of town. Couldn't
you have written me a note."

"I've not been out of town. I might have written you a note, but I
didn't suppose it mattered."

"Yet there is a legend to the effect that men and women sometimes get
to be such friends, and have such relations, that a sudden unexplained
absence of three months matters a great deal."

"That is so. But--what is the use, Ada? It doesn't matter with us,
does it? Are we not each capable of taking care of ourselves? Were we
ever of the conventionally sentimental?"

She sighed. "I suppose not. But it grew that way a little, didn't it,
Grant? Has it all been nothing to you?"

"I won't say that," he answered. "It has been a great deal to me, but
isn't it wiser to make all in the past tense now? What have we to
gain?"

She tried to smile. "Nothing, I suppose." Then breaking out fiercely:
"You are a strange man! You are like the creature Margrave, in
Bulwer's hard 'Strange Story,' with mind and body, but with no soul nor
sympathy."

The man in his turn became almost angry. He spoke more grimly:

"You are not just! Have I broken any pledge or violated any promise,
even an implied one? Have we not known each other on even terms? It
was but a pact for mutual enjoyment until either should be weary. We
have no illusions. You a Lilith of the red earth, not of Adam; you a
woman sweet and passionate and kind, but soulless, too, and fickle; and
I a trained man, made as soulless by experience, we met and agr