've grown very suspicious. Are you
sure this time?" He laid stress upon his bitterness. It was his one
weapon against her and he had been sharpening it with a vague purpose.

"Oh," said Betty, speaking low and furtively, "Jasper is fairly
caught. I have a reliable witness in the girl's maid. There is no
doubt of his guilt, Prosper, none. Everyone is talking of it. He has
been perfectly open in his attentions."

Every minute Betty looked younger and prettier, more provoking. Her
child-mouth with its clever smile was bright as though his kiss had
painted it.

"Who is the girl?" asked Prosper. He was deeply flushed. Being capable
of simultaneous points of view, he had been stung by that cool phrase
of Betty's concerning "Jasper's guilt."

"I'll tell you in a moment. Did you destroy my letter?"

He shook his head.

"Oh, Prosper, please!"

He took it out, tore it up, and walking over to the open fire, burned
the papers. He came back to his tea. "Well, Betty?"

"The girl," said Betty, "is the star in your play, 'The Leopardess,'
the girl that Jasper picked up two Septembers ago out West. He has
written to you about her. She was a cook, if you please, a hideous
creature, but Jasper saw at once what there was in her. She has made
the play. You'll have to acknowledge that yourself when you see her.
She is wonderful. And, partly owing to the trouble I've taken with
her, the girl is beautiful. One wouldn't have thought it possible. She
is not charming to me, she's not in the least subtle. It's odd that
she should have had such an effect upon Jasper, of all men...."

Prosper sipped his tea and listened. He looked at her and was bitterly
conscious that the excitement which had pleased and surprised him was
dying out. That faintness again assailed his spirit. He was feeling
stifled, ashamed, bored. Yes, that was it, bored. That life of service
and battle-danger in France had changed him more than he had realized
till now. He was more simple, more serious, more moral, in a certain
sense. He was like a man who, having denied the existence of Apollyon,
has come upon him face to face and has been burnt by his breath. Such
a man is inevitably moral. All this long, intricate intrigue with the
wife of a man who called him friend, seemed to him horribly unworthy.
If Betty had been a great lover, if she had not lost courage at the
eleventh hour and left him to face that terrible winter in Wyoming,
then their passion might have just