"You’re rubbing it in pretty hard, Harry. A man is bound to make mistakes——" "_I’m_ the mistake! I realize it, now—as Verne realized it. That’s why he did what he did. You don’t, if you _are_ right.... I never supposed I could behave as rottenly as I did last night. But it’s been a long strain.... You heard that rotten outbreak of mine concerning women—the night we heard what Verne had done? Well, the strain was showing.... It broke me last night...." He lifted his head and looked intently at Cleland: "It was the shock of seeing her in a public place with another man. I had never seen her with any other man. It’s nearly three years, now, since I made a damned ass of myself, and she very quietly went her way leaving me to go mine.... And in all that time, Cleland, there has not been a breath of suspicion against her. She has been in the lighter and more frivolous shows almost continuously; but she has lived as straight a life as any woman ever lived.... And I know it.... And I knew it—cur that I was—when I spoke to her as I did, and turned on you like a rotter——" He extended his hand and took hold of the iced glass, but let it rest there. "I’ve lied and lied and lied," he said, "to myself about myself; to others about my estimate of women.... I’m just a four-flusher, Cleland. The best of ’em are better than our stars. The remainder average as well as we do.... Verne got what was coming to him.... And so have I, Cleland—so have I——" "Wait a moment——" "Wait?" Belter laughed mirthlessly. "All right. I know how to wait. Waiting is the best thing I do. I’ve waited for nearly three years before I’ve told myself the truth. I’ve told it now, to myself, and to you.... But it’s too late to tell it to her." "Do you think it is?" Belter looked up in pallid surprise: "Of course." "I wonder," mused Cleland. Belter’s sunken gaze had become remote and fixed again. He said, half to himself: "I couldn’t let her alone. I couldn’t learn to mind my own business. I’d been bawling aloud my theories for years, Cleland, but I couldn’t apply them to her or to myself. I bragged about my mania for personal liberty, for tolerance; I lauded the maxim of ’hands off.’ But I couldn’t keep my meddling hands off her; I couldn’t understand that she had the right to personal liberty—freedom in the pursuit of happiness. No; I tried to head her off, check her, stampede her into the common corral whither all men’s wives are supposed to be driven—tried to rope her and throw her and blindfold, hobble and break her to suit myself.... And, Cleland, do you know what happened? I found I had come upon a character, a mind, a personality which would not endure the tyranny we men call domestic affection.... That’s what I discovered.... And I did not do the breaking. No; she has accomplished that. And—here I am, to admit it to you.... And I think I’ll go, now——" Cleland walked slowly to the door with him, one arm resting on his shoulder: