"Yes, of course!" he assented. He opened his match-case, lighted a cigarette and then flung it away nervously. "Lord, but I was a child in those days. I believed implicitly! Women? A religion to me. I was ready to fall down and worship! We were engaged--secret until I had got hold of myself. Easy? It was child's play! I could have won out in three months. Then, quite by accident, I found she was playing the same game with my best friend--how many others, God knows! Great God! talk about smashing idols for poor old heathen Chinese! Whew--there was nothing left! I didn't even see her. Went off, crazy as a loon. A wild letter, and good-by for a year. Bang around the world to get the poison out of my system. Little good it did, too!" He stopped, considered a moment, and added: "Now that I look back, I think she did care for me--as much as she could in her polygamous little soul--else she wouldn't have done what she did! When I got back--fool that I was--I found her Mrs. Jock Lindaberry, and the devil in the saddle!" "What! your own brother?" she said incredulously. "How did she dare?" "You don't know the lady!" he said, with a laugh. "There's nothing in this world she's afraid of. And--God, how she can hate! Fine revenge, eh?" "But you didn't tell--" "Jock? No! What's the use? We never talk much--and he knows! Then, there's a child, a boy--a Lindaberry; and that holds him. She was clever enough for that!" "You see her?" "Never have entered the house!" "You were very much in love?" she asked. "At twenty-three? Mad, crazy in love! Ready to take any man by the throat who dared insinuate a word!" "Aren't you over it yet?" "I? Yes and no. It was Kismet! If I'd been lucky enough, even then, to have found a woman who cared, whom I could worship--who knows? Well! the other thing happened! Kismet!" "But there are lots of women--" "Yes, of course! But I--I've never trusted since." "You are really a great coward, Mr. Lindaberry!" She said it impulsively--yet, once said, resolved to stand by her guns, feeling now threefold the anger and irritation he had awakened in her at their first meeting. He shifted in his seat, amazed. "You give up at your first defeat--let a woman who isn't worth a candle wreck your life!" "By Jove!" "Pride? You talk of pride and courage! You haven't a drop of either," she continued hotly. "So you'll give her just what she wants, the satisfaction of seeing how you cared! Yes, what a delicious revenge you give her! I'm a woman--I know! She hates you, and she sits back smiling, waiting for the end, saying to herself: 'I did it!' No; I have no patience with such weakness! You are nothing but a great coward!" She stopped, surprised at a sob that arose, unbidden, in her throat. He gazed ahead, without answering, a long while, his fingers playing on the wheel. "That's rather rough!" he said at last. "You deserve every bit of it!" "To call me a coward?" he said, with an uneasy laugh.