house opposite, a boy was lowering a
shade. It seemed to Cassy that she had raised one. But there are
explanations that explain nothing. To Lennox there was a shade suspended
before Margaret, who had judged him unheard. It obscured her. He could
not see her at all.

Over the way, the boy lowered a second shade and Cassy, as though
prompted by it, raised another. "Paliser said you admitted it."

From the obscurity Lennox turned, but it was still about him. "Admitted
what?"

Cassy reddened. "What I told you."

With the movement of the head that a bull has when he is going for you,
Lennox bent his own. The movement, which was involuntary, was momentary.
The shade had lifted. He saw Margaret, but behind her he saw others
holding her back, telling her he was not fit to be spoken to. He was
going for them. Meanwhile he had forgotten Cassy. He looked up, saw her,
remembered the part attributed to her in the story and struck the table.

"It is damnable that such a thing should be said of you."

"Oh," Cassy put in. "It was not at all on my account that I told you.
I----" She stopped short. The promised horsewhipping occurred to her.

Lennox took up the knife, gave it a turn, shoved it away. It was very
much as though he had twisted it in somebody's gizzards. The idea had
come to him that Paliser had concocted the admission. But, as he was
unable to conceive what his object could be, he dismissed it. None the
less, for what the man had said, he deserved to be booted down the club
steps.

Cassy had stopped short. The story behind the story did not concern
Lennox, yet as he might wonder how Paliser had ventured with her on such
a subject, she began at it again.

"We were married recently, or anyway I thought so. To-day I discovered
that the ceremony was bogus. Then I told him a thing or two and he told
me that."

Lennox stared. Angry already, angry ever since the rupture, angry with
that intensity of anger which only those who love--or who think they
do--and who are thwarted in it ever know, and all the angrier because he
had no one and could have no one to vent it on, until he got to the
front and got at the Huns, at that last fillip from Cassy he saw some
one on whom he could vent it, and yet to whom none the less he felt
strangely grateful. For, whatever Paliser had done or omitted, at any
rate, he had completely clarified the situation.

"I must run," said Cassy. "But you can tell Miss Austen, can't you?"

Lennox