At last Kate spoke, angered still more by her sister’s soft eyes which gazed steadily back and did not droop before her own flashing onslaught. Her voice was cold and cruel. There was nothing sisterly in it, nothing to remind either that the other had ever been beloved. “Fool!” hissed Kate. “Silly fool! Did you think you could steal a husband as you stole your clothes? Did you suppose marrying David would make him yours, as putting on my clothes seemed to make them yours? Well I can tell you he will never be a husband to you. He doesn’t love you and he never can. He will always love me. He’s as much mine as if I had married him, in spite of all your attempts to take him. Oh, you needn’t put up your baby mouth and pucker it as if you were going to cry. Cry away. It won’t do any good. You can’t make a man yours, any more than you can make somebody’s clothes yours. They don’t fit you any more than he does. You look horrid in blue, and you know it, in spite of all your prinking around and pretending. I’d be ashamed to be tricked out that way and know that every dud I had was made for somebody else. As for going around and pretending you have a husband—it’s a lie. You know he’s nothing to you. You know he never told you he cared for you. I tell you he’s mine, and he always will be.” “Kate, you’re married!” cried Marcia in shocked tones. “How can you talk like that?” “Married! Nonsense! What difference does that make? It’s hearts that count, not marriages. Has your marriage made you a wife? Answer me that! Has it? Does David love you? Does he ever kiss you? Yet he came to see me in New York this winter, and took me in his arms and kissed me. He gave me money too. See this brooch?”—she exhibited a jeweled pin—“that was bought with his money. You see he loves me still. I could bring him to my feet with a word to-day. He would kiss me if I asked him. He is weak as water in my hands.” Marcia’s cheeks burned with shame and anger. Almost she felt at the limit of her strength. For the first time in her life she felt like striking,—striking her own sister. Horrified over her feelings, and the rage which was tearing her soul, she looked up, and there stood David in the doorway, like some tall avenging angel! Kate had her back that way and did not see at once, but Marcia’s eyes rested on him hungrily, pleadingly, and his answered hers. From her sudden calmness Kate saw there was some one near, and turning, looked at David. But he did not glance her way. How much or how little he had heard of Kate’s tirade, which in her passion had been keyed in a high voice, he never let them know and neither dared to ask him, lest perhaps he had not heard anything. There was a light of steel in his eyes toward everything but Marcia, and his tone had in it kindness and a recognition of mutual understanding as he said: “If you are ready we had better go now, dear, had we not?”