“Oh, don’t I understand? It’s I that does understand, not you, or you would never have made such an asinine proposition to Gregory Compton. Why on earth didn’t you propose some place with _mines_--Mexico, Alaska, China--Then you might have stood some show--but Europe--Gregory--Do you remember those American business men that always looked as if they had left their minds in an office at the top of a thirty-story building, and their bodies were being led round by a string? The vision of Gregory astray in Europe for the rest of his life would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Talk about the conceit of man. It isn’t a patch on that of a woman when she gets the bug inside her head that she can be ‘everything’ to a man. I can manage Gregory till doomsday when I get him back, but you’d lose him inside of six months no matter which way you got him----” “That couldn’t be true! I recognised that he was mine--_mine_--the night we met before I left----” “What’s that?” “Oh, yes, I met him once before I went abroad with you--we talked for an hour----” “And he was the man you wrote those letters to in Europe----” “Yes.” “And I your most intimate friend!” “I never sent them, and you did not care for him then----” “Oh, I don’t see you apologising if you had turned heaven into hell. You made up your mind then to have him, I suppose?” “No. And not even when I came out here. I only wanted to be with him--know him a little better--have that much--Oh, I couldn’t make you understand any more than that I can suffer as much as if I were the best of women who had lost her husband by death. It was only after Mowbray came--there seemed a prospect----” “Well, I don’t know that I blame you so much, for I certainly bluffed it pretty well. I can forgive you for that but not for meaning to make me out a strumpet and send me to the muck heap, disgraced for the rest of my life. Well, come along. Let us go straight to Gregory and let him decide.” Ora did not move. “It’s either that or you go back to Butte with me tonight and start for Europe tomorrow morning.” “I know when I am beaten. I will leave. And don’t imagine that you have won because you are in the right. We have emerged from the dark ages of superstition, and we know that the wicked are not punished if they are strong enough. Nor are the virtuous rewarded for mere virtue--not once in ten thousand times. You have won because you are stronger than I. That is all.” “It’s enough for me.” Ora laughed. “Do you really believe that you can win him back? He’ll not forget me, because I can always fire his imagination. He is as indifferent to you as only a man can be when the woman is an old story.”