"What do you mean?" he gasped starting up again. "Would you make me doubt my own eyes? You sit there and coolly tell me I do not know the woman I married--the woman whom I held in my arms night before last--the woman who told me over and over again, by look and word, that she loved me?" She had blushed vividly and for a moment covered her face with her hands. But she stopped him at that point. "That is exactly what I do tell you. You do not know your wife, the woman whose name is on that marriage paper. Look at me closely. Come nearer. Is there not some feature different? Is she truly--this other woman--so like me?" She said it earnestly and eagerly. She bent toward him until her breath fanned his face and until he could look with his troubled eyes deep into her clear, shadowless orbs. And then, strange as it may seem, although John Ryder saw nothing unfamiliar in her countenance--nothing to warn him that this was not the woman whom he had wedded--one thing he suddenly knew. It was a startling discovery. It shook him to the very depths of his soul. Whereas Ruth's very presence--his being near her and in physical contact with her--had thrilled him each time it occurred, he felt no such shock now. His anger had abated. He was shaken no more by the terrible rage under which he had labored. But this woman held no such influence over him, after all, as had Ruth. Still he was confused. "Ruth! Can such a thing be?" he whispered brokenly. "You surely _do_ love me a little?" The abjectness of his speech and the misery in the man's face were awful. Miss Mont covered her face again and began to sob. "You will not do this to me, Ruth? I know you must love me a little. No woman could be to a man what you were to me without loving him. Whatever this shadow is that has come between us----" The passion and pleading in his voice had swept her on with him. She was trembling violently and her sobs were more broken. He would have gathered her into his arms by one sudden movement had she not sprung to her feet and eluded his hands. "Stop! Stop!" she cried hoarsely. "This is not for me to hear! You do not mean this for _me_! "I tell you, Mr. Ryder, I am another woman. I am not the person you married. I am not Ruth Mont; I am Rose Mont--and always have been and," she broke into passionate weeping, "and--and--always--shall be--_now_!" [Illustration: I am another woman. I am not the person you married.] The vehemence of her emotion quelled Ryder as nothing else had done. She flung herself upon her knees with her head and arms resting upon the littered dressing table and abandoned herself to tears which seemed to well from her very soul. He leaned over her, not daring to touch her, anxious, panting--altogether broken in spirit. A woman's tears flow easily they say; but this woman was not by nature a crying woman. This flood, however, cleared her heart and mind, and she saw and understood more clearly when her passion was past.