“Why weren’t you honest?” he asked angrily. And then he said again, more bitterly, more scornfully, than before: “Why wasn’t I told about Holloway?” She clasped her hands tightly together. “What has been told you about Mr. Holloway and myself?” she asked. “Nothing.” “Then why do you speak as you do?” At that he thrust his hands into his pockets and again began to fling himself back and forth across the room. “Perhaps you’ll think I’m a sneak,” he said, “but I wasn’t a sneak. I went in to see you that Saturday as usual, and when I went upstairs—you were with him in the library. I heard three words. God! they were enough! I didn’t know that anything could knock the bottom out of life so quickly. My sun and stars all fell at once—I reckon my Heaven went too. At all events I went out of your house and down town and I drank and drank—and all to the truth and honor of women.” He halted with his back to her, and there was silence in the room for many minutes. When he faced around after a little, she was weeping bitterly, having turned in her seat so that her face might be buried in the chair back. Her whole body was shaking with suppressed sobs. He stood still and stared down upon her and finally she lifted up her face and said with trembling lips: “And all the trouble came from that. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I say?” “I don’t know what you can do, or what you can say,” he said, remaining still and watching her sincere distress. “I’d feel pretty blamed mean if I were you, though. Understand, I don’t question your good taste in choosing Holloway, nor your right to love him, nor his right to be there; but I fail to understand why you were to me just as you were, and I think it was unfair—out-and-out mean!” “Mr. Denham,” she said almost painfully, “you’ve made a dreadful mistake.” Then she stopped and moistened her lips. “I don’t know just what words you overheard, but the dramatic instructor was there that afternoon drilling Mr. Holloway and myself for the parts which we took in the charity play that week; after he went out we went over one of the scenes alone. Perhaps you heard part of that.” She stopped and almost choked. “Mr. Holloway has never really made any love to me—perhaps he never wanted to—perhaps I’ve never wanted him to.” Jack stared. His misconception was so strongly intrenched in the forefront of his brain that he could not possibly dislodge it at once. Mrs. Rosscott continued to dry the tears that continued to rise; she seemed terribly affected at finding herself to have been the cause (no matter how innocently) of this latest tale of wrack and ruin. “Do you mean to say,” the young man said, at last, “that there was no truth in what I heard? Don’t you expect to marry Holloway?” “I never expect to marry anyone, but certainly not him,” she replied, trying to regain her composure. “Honest?” “Assuredly.”