"Live this lie!" she accused hotly, from the shelter of her arms. "Lie!" he strode a step closer. "You knew--" "I knew every paper reeked with it five years ago--that I could not pick up a sheet without seeing the shameful words. Every man I met home or abroad showed his knowledge of it. It's been branded on every hour of my life since that cursed day." "You knew we did not know." "How should I? Why shouldn't you?" "You should have told--" "Is it a pleasant tale to tell? No!" with slow bitterness, "I should _not_ have told. Then you would have married me, and I--oh God!" "Married _you_--_you_, with another wife!" "Wife!" "A woman bearing your name." "She does!" sullenly. "And I!" she cried. "And I?" "You speak as-- You! You would have been my legal, loved, idolized wife. Listen, for you shall know! My God, it's hard enough! I was a fool, young! I had to send for my father to sign my license, and he, he was taken in too. She was beautiful. Her family, her position-- Well, all she wanted was money, and she got it. I paid her enough for my freedom, God knows. She fooled us both." "Paid her! And she is bearing your name, living on your money!" "It was what she wanted! She got both!" "And you, you loved her!" Lawson shrank as if struck. "It was the passion of a crude idiot!" he cried. "And you tired of her?" "Put it truthfully--she of me, if ever she wanted me!" "You loved her, and you have forgotten her! How do I know," blazed Frances, "that you might not forget me?" "Frances!" the young man raised his hand, as though to ward off a blow. "Forget me--_me_!" "Frances, you cannot dream, I cannot tell you. She--she wanted only a man to shield herself behind"--the girl he spoke to could not know what he meant, and he could not dare to make her understand, even to excuse himself--"and the money for jewels and clothes and fine living and show." He could not tell her of the life that woman led, which might be fast and might be worse. "I'm no saint, but I could not stand it. She took scant time to show me what she thought. Once--once-- "I tell you with truth I thought at first that you knew it. I thought every one, wherever I should go, would know. It was a spicy enough scandal for the paper's headlines; I thought it blazoned everywhere, even if it were five years ago." "We never read such things," said Frances in indignant defence. "So I find; but even then, there is always some one ready to speak." "There was none here." "So I find," he repeated wearily, "and so all this blunder." "As to you knowing, Frances," he said gently, "I knew you did not. I tried to tell you once, and then, the opportunity gone, let myself stray in this fool's paradise." It was paradise to him, now the gates were closed. "I feared your crude views; you will never know the temptation I fought to be silent."