“And everything on mine. That’s precisely the inference they drew. Girls do go about, you know, giving people to understand that men—” “But not girls like you.” “Yes, girls like me; or sufficiently like me. And so I had—in sheer self-respect—to let Lady Rideover see that there was nothing in it of the kind of thing she thought, and that I was actually going home to be—” “But didn’t she see? Didn’t she know? Didn’t everybody see? Didn’t everybody know?” In the two brief sentences that came out with something like a groan she threw tremendous emphasis on the first word. “Nobody knew! Nobody saw!” There was a similar emphasis on the penultimate word in my response. “Did you ask them?” She flashed back at me: “I did—almost. At times like that—if it’s so—some one generally knows it from—from the person who’s expecting to be brimming over with his secret.” She laughed again, lightly, nervously. “But in this instance nobody did.” “You asked them?” “Practically. I forgot everything I used to consider pride and—and I sounded them.” “You sounded whom?” “Oh, the people who knew you best—and who knew me—Annette, Esther Coningsby, Ralph—any one to whom I thought you might have betrayed yourself by a word. But it was just as with Evelyn and Lady Rideover. You had practically not mentioned my name. Hilda Grace told me she tried to sound you—that Sunday at Rosyth.” “Well?” “I’m only quoting her, mind you. She said she didn’t get”—there was a repetition of that nervous laugh—“she said she didn’t get—any satisfaction. And so—” I tried to take a reasonable tone. “But how could I tell you or anybody else before I’d confessed to you who I was and where you’d first seen me?” “Exactly. I quite understand that—now that you’ve said what you’ve said to-night. It’s where the past makes us pay—” “For what I used to be.” “Oh, you’re not the only one,” she declared, in a curious, offhand tone. “It’s for what I used to be, too.” I found it difficult to follow her. “What you used to be? I don’t understand you.” “You know about me—how I’ve been engaged to one man after another—and broken the engagements.” “Because you were trying to find the right one.” “It wasn’t only that. I thought of myself; I didn’t think of them. I let them offer me everything they had to give—and pretended to accept it—just to experiment—to play with—and now—now I’m—I’m caught!” “Caught—in what way?” She tossed her hands outward in a little, exasperated gesture. “I can’t do the same thing again. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be sane.” “The same thing? Do tell me what you mean.” “It’s—it’s one of the same men. I’m—I’m caught. It’s what mother—and Elsie Coningsby—and other people who could talk to me plainly—told me would happen some day. I’m—I’m punished. And I can’t do the same thing the second time.” It was still to escape from the yawning hell into which I felt myself going down that I said, stupidly, “Why can’t you?”