was sharp, as though she had struck him on the
raw.

Althea steadied her own voice; she wished to strike him on the raw, and
accurately; she could only do that by hiding from him her own great
dismay. 'I could not have believed that Helen would marry a man merely
for his money.' She did not believe that Helen was to marry Franklin
merely for his money. If only she could have believed it; but the
bleeding heart throbbed: 'Lost--lost--lost.' It was not money that Helen
had seen and accepted; it was something that she herself had been too
blind and weak to see. In Helen's discovery she helplessly partook. He
_was_ of value, then. He, whom she had not found good enough for her,
was good enough for Helen. And this man--this affianced husband of
hers--ah, his value she well knew; she was not blind to it--that was the
sickening knowledge; she knew his value and it was not hers, not her
possession, as Franklin's love and all that Franklin was had been.
Gerald possessed her; she seemed to have no part in him; how little, his
next words showed.

'What right have you to say she's taking him merely for his money?'
Gerald demanded in his tense, vibrant voice.

Ah, how he made her suffer with his hateful unconsciousness of her
pain--the male unconsciousness that rouses woman's conscious cruelty.

'I know Helen. She has always been quite frank about her mercenary
ideas. She always told me she would marry a man for his money.'

'Then why do you say it's incredible that she is going to?'

Why, indeed? but Althea held her lash. 'I did not believe, even of her,
that she would marry a man she considered so completely insignificant,
so completely negligible--a man she described to me as a funny little
man. There are limits, even to Helen's insensitiveness, I should have
imagined.'

She had discovered the raw. Gerald was breathing hard.

'That must have been at first--when she didn't know him. They became
great friends; everybody saw that Helen had become very fond of him; I
never knew her to be so fond of anybody. You are merely angry because a
man who used to be in love with you has fallen in love with another
woman.'

So he, too, could lash. 'How dare you, Gerald!' she said.

At her voice he paused, and there, in the wet road, they stood and
looked at each other.

What Althea then saw in his face plunged her into the nightmare abyss of
nothingness. What had she left? He did not love her--he did not even
care for her. She had