She paused a moment, and Clavering unconsciously braced himself. Her initial revelation had left the deeper and more personal part of him stunned, and he was listening to her with a certain detachment. So far she had revealed little that Dinwiddie had not told him already, and as he knew that this brief recapitulation of her earlier life was not prompted by vanity, he could only wonder if it were the suggestive preface to that secret volume at which Dinwiddie had hinted more than once. As she continued silent, he got suddenly to his feet. "I'll walk up and down a bit, if you don't mind," he muttered. "I'm rather--ah--getting rather cramped." "Do," she said indifferently. "Please go on. I am deeply interested." She continued in a particularly level voice while he strode unevenly up and down: "Of course the time came when ugly memories faded, my buoyant youth asserted itself and I wanted love. And when a woman feels a crying need to love as well as to be loved, her whole being a peremptory demand, unsatisfied romance quickening, she is not long finding the man. I had many to choose from. I made my choice and was happy for a time. Although I had been brought up in the severest respectability--just recall Jane Oglethorpe, Mrs. Vane, Mrs. Ruyler, and you will be able to reconstruct the atmosphere--several of the women I had known as a girl had lovers, it seemed to me that American women came to Europe for no other purpose, and I was now living at the fountain-head of polite license. Not that I made any apologies to myself. I should have taken a lover if I had wanted one had virtue been the fashion. And the contract with my husband had been dissolved by mutual consent. The only thing that rebelled was my pride. I hated stepping down from my pedestal." Clavering gave a short barking laugh. "Your arrogance is the most magnificent thing about you, and that is saying more than I could otherwise express. I'll fortify myself before you proceed further, if you will permit." He poured himself out a drink, and returned to his chair with the glass in his hand. "Pray go on." She had not turned her head and continued to look into the fire. She might have been posing to a sculptor for a bust that would hardly look more like marble when finished. "I soon discovered that I had not found happiness. Men want. They rarely love. I realized that I had demanded in love far more than passion, and I received nothing else. "I am not going to tell you how many lovers I have had. It is none of your business----" "Ah!" Clavering, staring at her, had forgotten his first shock, everything but her living presence; forgotten also that he had once apprehended something of the sort, then dismissed it from his mind. He spilt the whiskey over the arm of the chair, then sprang to his feet and began to pace the room once more.