"I don't know," she murmured. "But that's beside the point. I do love him. I know it's unwise. It's a feeling that has overwhelmed me in a way that I didn't believe possible, that I had hoped to avoid. But--but I can't pretend, Jack. I don't want you to misunderstand. I don't want this to make us both miserable. I don't want it to generate an atmosphere of suspicion and jealousy. We'd only be fighting about a shadow. I never cheated at anything in my life. You can trust me still, can't you?" "Absolutely," Fyfe answered without hesitation. "Then that's all there is to it," she replied, "unless--unless you're ready to give me up as a hopeless case, and let me go away and blunder along the best I can." He shook his head. "I haven't even considered that," he said. "Very likely it's unwise of me to say this,--it will probably antagonize you,--but I know Monohan better than you do. I'd go pretty far to keep you two apart--now--for your sake." "It would be the same if it were any other man," she muttered. "I can understand that feeling in you. It's so--so typically masculine." "No, you're wrong there, dead wrong," Fyfe frowned. "I'm not a self-sacrificing brute by any means. Still, knowing that you'll only live with me on sufferance, if you were honestly in love with a man that I felt was halfway decent, I'd put my feelings in my pocket and let you go. If you cared enough for him to break every tie, to face the embarrassment of divorce, why, I'd figure you were entitled to your freedom and whatever happiness it might bring. But Monohan--hell, I don't want to talk about him. I trust you, Stella. I'm banking on your own good sense. And along with that good, natural common sense, you've got so many illusions. About life in general, and about men. They seem to have centered about this one particular man. I can't open your eyes or put you on the right track. That's a job for yourself. All I can do is to sit back and wait." His voice trailed off huskily. Stella put a hand on his shoulder. "Do you care so much as all that, Jack?" she whispered. "Even in spite of what you know?" "For two years now," he answered, "you've been the biggest thing in my life. I don't change easy; I don't want to change. But I'm getting hopeless." "I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. I didn't love you to begin with--" "And you've always resented that," he broke in. "You've hugged that ghost of a loveless marriage to your bosom and sighed for the real romance you'd missed. Well, maybe you did. But you haven't found it yet. I'm very sure of that, although I doubt if I could convince you." "Let me finish," she pleaded. "You knew I didn't love you--that I was worn out and desperate and clutching at the life line you threw. In spite of that,--well, if I fight down this love, or fascination, or infatuation, or whatever it is,--I'm not sure myself, except that it affects me strongly,--can't we be friends again?"