“But not the high mountain. Oh, Burt, think of it! It seems almost unbelievable, and yet I’ve always known you were destined for it. I knew you’d be great. Why, even in those first days here, you promised it. You knew it, too. You had the look of a man who was dedicated to something beyond the immediate, the look of one who is going to travel far and high. I believe that was one of the reasons why I loved you. And you----” She leaned over the table, and spread out the brilliant feathers of her fan, gazing at their splendour and not at her husband as she went on: “Did you love me when you married me?” “Why else do men marry women?” he countered, letting the smoke veil his eyes. “To put other women out of their lives, sometimes,” she said. “Well?” He drew hard on the cigar. “I never knew until to-day who she was,” she said. “I opened a letter by mistake. You may see from the envelope how easy it was for me to think it was addressed to me when I found it in my mail. It was directed merely to Washington, and the post office sent it to the house here.” “I quite understand,” he said, and held out his hand for Dell Martin’s letter. His wife drew it from the gay bag she had borne, and gave it to him. For a moment he looked at the pitiful missive, contrasting it with the appointments of the table before him. “She’s dying,” Rhoda said, “and she asks you to go to her.” “Yes,” he said, “I know it.” “But----” “How did I know? Her husband followed me down from the Hill to-night. He demanded that I return with him.” “Then she married, after----” “She was married,” he said, “when I met her.” “Oh!” She snapped shut the great fan, twisting its tortoise-shell handle between her lithe fingers. “When was that?” “Before I knew you.” He sank down into his chair, staring forward as if he were a judge considering a decision. “I was twenty-two years old, teaching school in the mountains and studying law with old Judge McLaurin, when I met Dell Martin. She had been married to Boyce against her will, as plenty of the girls in the hills are married. She was lonely and wretched, and lovelier than a wild rose. I was young and reckless. I fell in love with her and I made her love me. Boyce found it out. He drew me into a fight and I won it. He shot me then. Dell came to nurse me and I wouldn’t let her go. Boyce wouldn’t get a divorce and she couldn’t, but she stayed with me. We had two years of utter happiness. I’d have gone through hell to win them.” A stick of the tortoise-shell handle of the fan broke in Rhoda’s hands. “But you left her?”