"My God, Sidney, I'm asking you to marry me!"

"I--I know that. I am asking you something else, Max."

"I have never been in love with her."

His voice was sulky. He had drawn the car close to a bank, and they were

sitting in the shade, on the grass. It was the Sunday afternoon after

Sidney's experience in the operating-room.

"You took her out, Max, didn't you?"

"A few times, yes. She seemed to have no friends. I was sorry for her."

"That was all?"

"Absolutely. Good Heavens, you've put me through a catechism in the last

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ten minutes!"

"If my father were living, or even mother, I--one of them would have done

this for me, Max. I'm sorry I had to. I've been very wretched for several

days."

It was the first encouragement she had given him. There was no coquetry

about her aloofness. It was only that her faith in him had had a shock and

was slow of reviving.

"You are very, very lovely, Sidney. I wonder if you have any idea what you

mean to me?"

"You meant a great deal to me, too," she said frankly, "until a few days

ago. I thought you were the greatest man I had ever known, and the best.

And then--I think I'd better tell you what I overheard. I didn't try to

hear. It just happened that way."

He listened doggedly to her account of the hospital gossip, doggedly and

with a sinking sense of fear, not of the talk, but of Carlotta herself.

Usually one might count on the woman's silence, her instinct for

self-protection. But Carlotta was different. Damn the girl, anyhow! She

had known from the start that the affair was a temporary one; he had never

pretended anything else.

There was silence for a moment after Sidney finished. Then: "You are not a child any longer, Sidney. You have learned a great deal in

this last year. One of the things you know is that almost every man has

small affairs, many of them sometimes, before he finds the woman he wants

to marry. When he finds her, the others are all off--there's nothing to

them. It's the real thing then, instead of the sham."

"Palmer was very much in love with Christine, and yet--"

"Palmer is a cad."

"I don't want you to think I'm making terms. I'm not. But if this thing

went on, and I found out afterward that you--that there was anyone else, it

would kill me."




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