"Unhappy? I've just been _sick_ about it," Julia said. "I can't believe that we're talking about it, and it's all over!" She sighed luxuriously. "There's no use of _my_ doing anything when you're this way, Jim--I can't even remember that you love me," she went on after a silence. "Everything seems changed and queer. Sometimes I think you hate me, sometimes you give me such cold looks--oh, you _do_, Jimmy!--they just make me feel sick and queer all over, if you know what I mean! And oh," she sank back again with her head on his shoulder, "oh, if _only_ then I could dare just come down to you here like this, and make you take me in your arms, and talk to me this way!" "Don't!" Jim said briefly, kissing the top of her hair. "It just seems to _smoulder_ in my heart!" Julia said. "I can't bear it!'; "Don't!" he said again. "Ah, but what makes you do it, Jim?" she asked, sitting erect to rest both wrists on his shoulders, and bring her blue eyes very near his own. Jim's glance did not meet hers, he looked sombrely past her at the fire. Suddenly she felt his arms tighten about her with a force that almost hurt her. "Oh, it's this!" he said harshly, "I love you--you're mine! You're the thing I live for, the thing I'm proudest of! I can't bear to think there was a time when I didn't know you, my little innocent girl! I can't bear--my God!--to think that you cared for some one else--!" And with swift force he got to his feet, and put her in his chair. Julia sat motionless while he took a restless brief turn about the room. He snatched a little jade god from the table, examined it closely, and put it down again, to come and stand with his back to the fire, one arm flung across the mantel, and his gloomy eyes fixed on her. Julia met the rushing, engulfing wave of her own emotion bravely. "Jim," she said bravely, "does it mean nothing to you that there were other women in _your_ life before you knew me?" "Dearest," he answered seriously and quickly, "God knows that I would cut my hand off to be able to blot that all out of my boyhood. Those things mean nothing to a man, Ju, and they meant less to me than to most men. Women can't understand that, but if you knew how men regard it, you would realize that very few can bring their wives as clean a record as mine!"