was! There was a kind of shame in it. It
weakened him, it lowered him.

She had seen it from the minute when he began to tell his halting tale
about Claude. It was pitiful the way in which he had betrayed himself.
From Fay she had got no more than a hint--a hint she had been quick to
collate with her knowledge of some secret grief on Thor's part; but she
hadn't been really sure of the truth till she saw he was trying to hide
it. That Thor should be trying to hide anything made her burn inwardly
with something more poignant than humiliation.

She had smiled when he looked so imploringly toward her, but she hardly
knew why. Perhaps it was to encourage him, to give him heart. For the
first time in her life she felt the stronger, the superior. She was
sorry for him, even though there was something about this new and
unexpected phase in him that she despised.

She had got no further than that when the guests came and she had to
give them her attention. When they left, and Thor was seeing them to the
door, she took the opportunity to slip up to her room again. She locked
the door behind her, and locked the door that communicated with his
dressing-room. Once more she took her stand before the pier-glass.

Something had come to her; she was sure of it. It had come almost since
that afternoon. If it was not beauty, it rendered beauty of no
importance. It was a spirit, a fire, that made her a woman who could be
proud, a woman a man might be proud of. She had come to her own at last.
She could see for herself that there was a subdued splendor about her
which raised her in the scale of personality. She had little vanity;
hitherto she had had little pride; but she knew now, with an assurance
which it would have been hypocritical to disguise, that she was the true
mate of the man she had taken Thor to be. She had known it
before--diffidently and apologetically. She knew it now calmly, and as a
matter of course, in a manner that did away with any necessity for
shrinking or self-depreciation.

She moved away from the mirror, taking off the string of small pearls
she wore and throwing them on the dressing-table. In the middle of the
room she stood with a feeling of helplessness. It was so difficult to
see what she ought to do. What was one's duty toward a husband who had
practically told her that he had married her only because he couldn't
marry a woman he loved better? Other questions began to rise within her,
questions and protes