, were you going to give money to Rosie
Fay?"

He suppressed the natural question concerning her sources of information
in order to say, as quietly as he could, "If--if Claude had married her
I was going to--to help them out."

She resented what she considered his evasiveness. "That isn't just what
I asked."

"Even so, it tells you what you want to know. Doesn't it?"

"Not everything I want to know."

"Why should you want to know--everything?"

"Because--" It struck her that her reason could be best expressed by
shifting her ground. "Thor dear, exactly why did you want to marry me?"

The change in tactics troubled him. "I think I told you that at the
time."

"You told me you came to me as to a--to a shelter."

"And as to a home. I said that, too, Lois."

"Yes," she agreed, slowly, "you said that, too." A brief interval gave
emphasis to the succeeding words: "But did you think it was enough?"

"I couldn't judge of that. I could only say--what I had to
say--truthfully."

"Oh, I know it was--truthfully. It's--it's just the trouble. You see,
Thor," she went on, unsteadily, "I thought you were telling me only some
of what was in your heart--and it was all."

"I'm not certain that I know what you mean by all. What I felt was--so
much." He added, reproachfully, "It's surely a great deal when a man
finds a woman his refuge from trouble."

"That's perfectly true, Thor; and there's no one in the world who
wouldn't be touched by it. But in the case of a wife, she can hardly
help thinking of the kind of trouble he's escaping from."

"But so long as he escapes from it--"

She interrupted quickly: "Yes; so long as he does. But when he doesn't?
When, instead of leaving his trouble outside the refuge, he brings it
in?"

He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony. "Look here, Lois; have
you any particular motive in bringing this up now?"

"Yes, Thor. It's the same motive I had a few weeks ago, only that I
haven't been sure of it till to-night. I want you"--she hesitated, but
urged herself on--"I want you--to let me go away."

"Go away?" he cried, sharply. "Go away where?"

"I don't know yet. Anywhere. There are one or two visits I might
make--or I could find a place. That part of it doesn't matter."

"But when you wanted to go away a few weeks ago--"

"It was to--to take _her_. I shouldn't need to do that now, because
she's better. In a way she's all right--all right, only changed."

It was to make a sh