“Really I’m not. It isn’t selfishness.... It’s just that I am so confused by the whole situation that I don’t know what to do.... You don’t know how relieved and happy I would be if there was nobody but you, and we were going to be married. You are just the kind of wife—” “That your neighbors would approve of,” she interrupted. “I know. What I don’t know is why I keep on talking to you like this. I ought to send you about your business and tell you never to come near me again ... but I’m not going to. You’ve told me in effect that you would be in love with me if it weren’t for somebody else, and that the only reason you are pleased to consider me as a candidate at all is because you are afraid your family and your neighbors would make a fuss if you took the other woman home. That’s the truth, and you know it is.” “Well,” he said, ruefully, and not wisely, “so long as you don’t love me, what does it matter?” “So long as I don’t love you it doesn’t matter in the least.” “But—” She shook her head. “We sha’n’t talk about my loving you. I’m not going to love you.” “Do you mean that?” “Decidedly.” “You wouldn’t marry me?” “Of course not.” “Why?” “Really, I think you’re out of your mind. Even if I loved you—which I don’t—do you think I’d sit and wait for you to reason out that you had better fall in love with me, and then grab you with wild eagerness—after you make up your mind to chuck another woman whom you have assured me that you do love?” “But suppose I do love you? Would the fact of my—my affair with Andree prevent you from marrying me?” “If you loved me and I loved you nothing in the world would stop me from marrying you.” “Anyhow, I’ve got that question answered.” “And much good may it do you.” “Why?” “Because the condition doesn’t exist. If it did exist I might answer differently. I might think then that I could never marry a man who had done such a thing.” This conversation took place at noon in a little café on the rue St.-Honoré not distant from the Y. M. C. A. headquarters. Kendall had met Maude Knox as he was seeking a place to lunch, and they had gone together. Now he wished he might sit and argue the question until his status with her was definitely settled, if it could be definitely settled, but she refused to pursue the subject. “No, that’s all we talk about that. You can pick out any subject you want to, but we are through talking about you and me.... And, besides, I’ve got to get back to work.” “When shall we have dinner together?” “I don’t know.” “You’re angry with me.” “No, but I’m disgusted with myself because I’m not. If I had a spark of pride I’d never speak to you again.” “Why?”