The worst of it was that when Francis was gay and like a playmate, as he had been at their luncheon before Logan came, she could feel that things were nearly all right. But when he spoke as he was speaking now the terror of him came back worse than ever. "No. No, you don't seem strange at all," she said. "Why should you?" But while she spoke the words she knew they were not true. She looked at him, and his face was like a stranger's face. She had known other men as well as she had known her husband, except for the brief while when she had promised to marry him. She took stock of his features; the straight, clearly marked black brows under the mark the cap made on his forehead; the rather high cheekbones, the clear-cut nose and chin, the little line of black mustache that did not hide his hard-set and yet sensitive lips; the square, rather long jaw--"He'll have deep lines at the sides of his mouth in a few more years," she thought, and--"He's much darker than I remembered him. But he has no color under the brown. I thought he had a good deal of color . . ." She appraised his face, not liking it altogether, as if she had never seen it before. His hand, long, narrow, muscular, burned even more deeply than his face, and with a fine black down lying close over it, seemed a hand she had never seen or been touched by before. But that was his wedding-ring--her wedding-ring--on the thin third finger. She even knew that inside it was an inscription--"Marjorie--Francis----" and the date of their wedding. Hers was like it. He had bought them and had them inscribed with everything but the actual date before she had given in; that had been put in, of course, the week before their marriage. Oh, what _right_ had he to be wearing her wedding-ring? "Would you like a little time to think it over?" he asked heavily. She was irrationally angry at him. What right had he to think she needed time to think it over? Why hadn't he the decency to be deceived by her behavior? Then she stole another look at him, with all the gaiety and youth gone out of his face, and made up her mind that the anger ought to be on his side. But it apparently was not. "Oh, _please_ don't mind!" she begged him, abandoning some of her defenses. "It's true, I do feel a little strange, but I'm sure it will all come straight if--if I wait a little. You see, you were gone so long." "Yes. I worried a lot about it on shipboard," he answered her directly. His face did not lighten, but there was a sort of relief in his tone, as if actually knowing the truth was better than being fenced with. "I thought to myself--'I hurried her into it so. I wonder if she really will care when I come back.' It was such a long time. But then your letters were so sweet and loving, and I cared such a lot----"