d twenty
then. She may have been a year or two older. She was living at that time
with Billy Cummings. And somehow it happened--after Billy died--and she
was stranded--"

She made an appealing gesture. "_Please!_ I know how those things come
about--or I can easily imagine. In your case--I'd--I'd rather not try."
She got the words out somehow without breaking down.

"All the same, Edith," he went on, "you'll _have_ to try--if you're
going to do me anything like justice. If she hadn't been a refined,
educated sort of girl, entirely at sea in her surroundings, and
stranded--stranded for money, mind you, next door to going to
starve--and no chance of getting a job, because she couldn't act a
little bit--if it hadn't been for all that--"

"Oh, I know how you'd be generous!"

"Yes; but you don't know how I came to be a fool."

"Is there any reason why I _should_ know--now that the fact is there?"

He looked at her steadily. "Edith! What are you made of?"

She returned his look. "I think--of stone. Up till to-day I've been a
woman of flesh and blood; but I'm not sure that I am any longer. You
can't kill the heart in a woman's body--and still expect her to _feel_."

"But, Edith--Edith darling--there's no reason why I _should_ have killed
the heart in your body when I never dreamed of doing you a wrong--that
is, an intentional wrong," he corrected.

"You knew you were doing _some_ woman a wrong--some future woman, the
woman you'd marry--as far back as when you took up what Billy Cummings
dropped from his dead hands--"

"Oh, that! That, dear, is nothing but the talk of feminist meetings. Men
are men, and women are women. You can't make one law for them both.
Besides, it's too big a subject to go into now."

"I'm not trying to. I wasn't thinking of men in general; I was thinking
only of you."

"But, good Lord, Edith, you don't think I've been better than any one
else, do you?"

Her forlorn smile made his heart ache. "I _did_ think so. I dare say it
was a mistake."

"It _was_ a mistake. If you hadn't made it--"

"But it was at least a mistake one can understand. I could hardly be
expected to take it for granted--whatever men may be, or may have the
right to be--that the man who asked me to marry him--and who made me
love him as I think few men have been loved by women--I could hardly
take it for granted that he was already keeping--and had been keeping
for years--and would keep for years to come--another--"

He