He shrank from her sensitively. "I really don't like to talk about such things," he faltered. "Tell me about your marriage." "Not yet; one thing at a time." She dropped her sunshade at her feet and locked her white hands over her knee. "I shall never see you again after to-day, Dick, and I _do_ want to understand you a little better, so that when I look back on our friendship you won't be such a tantalizing mystery. Dick, you never loved me; you never loved your wife; but you _have_ loved some one." He lowered his startled glance to the ground. She saw a quiver pass over him and a slow flush rise in his face. "What are you driving at?" he suddenly demanded. "All this is leading nowhere." She smiled in a kindly, even sympathetic way. "It can't do any harm, Dick, for, really, what I have found out has made me sorry for you for the first time in my life--genuinely and sincerely sorry." "What you have found out?" he faltered, half fearfully. "Yes, and it doesn't matter how I discovered it, but I did. I happened to stay for a week at a little hotel in Ridgeyille last month, and a slight thing I picked up about your stay up there five years ago gradually led me on to the whole thing. Dick, I saw Dolly Drake one day on one of my walks. One look at her and the whole thing became plain. You loved her. You came back here with the intention of marrying her and leading a different life. You would have done it, too, but for my threats and your partial engagement to your wife. You went against your true self when you married, and you have never gotten over it." He was unable to combat her assertions, and simply sat in silence, an expression of keen inner pain showing itself in his drawn lips. "See how well I have read you!" she sighed. "I always knew there was something unexplained. You would have been more congenial with your wife but for that experience. You are to blame for her dissatisfaction. Not having love from you, she is leaning on the love of an old sweetheart. Dick, that pretty girl in the mountains would have made you happy. I read the article about her in the paper the other day. From all accounts, she is a remarkable woman, and genuine." Mostyn nodded. "She _is_ genuine," he admitted. "Well, now you know the truth. But all that is past and gone. You forget something else." "No, I don't," she took him up, confidently. "You are thinking of your boy." Again he nodded. "Love for a woman is one thing, Marie, but the love for one's own child passes beyond anything else on earth."