Cara was startled by their expression of strain. They seemed to glare with a hard, unnatural brilliance, as though the man's vision were focused upon some terrible inner presentment. She laid a detaining hand on his sleeve, but he appeared quite unconscious of her touch and she gave his arm a little shake. "Eliot!" she said quickly. "Eliot! Are you trying to cut me?" As though by an immense effort he seemed to come back to the consciousness of his material environment. "To cut you?" he repeated dully. He brushed his hand across his forehead. "No, of course I wasn't trying to cut you." He looked shockingly ill. His face was grey and lined, and his shoulders sagged as though he were physically played out. The boots and leggings he wore were caked with mud, and his coat had little torn ends of wool sticking up over it, as if he had been walking blindly ahead, careless of direction, and had forced his way through thickets of bramble rather than turn aside to seek an easier path. "What have you been doing with yourself?" she asked rather breathlessly. In every nerve of her she felt that something terrible had happened. "You look"--trying to summon up a smile--"as if you'd been having a battle." "I've been walking." "Far?" He gave a sudden laugh. "To hell and back. I don't know the mileage." "Eliot, what do you mean?" He looked down at her, and now that dreadful glare which had so frightened her had gone out of his eyes. They were human once more, but the naked misery in them shocked her into momentary silence. She would have liked to run away--to escape from those eyes. They were the windows of a soul enduring torture that was almost too intolerable to be borne. It was only by a strong effort of will that she at last forced her voice to do her bidding. "What has happened, Eliot?" she said, speaking very gently. "Can't you tell me?" He stared at her a moment. Then: "Why, yes," he said. "I think I could tell you--part of it. It might amuse you. I've found you were not the only woman in the world who counts the shekels. You wouldn't marry me because I was poor. Now another woman is ready to marry me just because I'm rich. There's only one drawback." "Drawback?" "Yes. Quite a drawback. You see, it doesn't appeal to me to be married because I've a decent income, any more than it appealed to me ten years ago to be turned, down for the opposite reason." Cara shrank from this bitter reference to the past. "You can be very cruel, Eliot," she said unsteadily. "Cruelty breeds cruelty," he replied with indifference. "Still, I'm beginning to think I was too hard on you, Cara, in the past. It seems finance plays an amazingly strong hand in the game of love. But it's taken two women to teach me the lesson thoroughly"--with a short laugh. "Two?" "You--and Ann." "Ann! I don't believe it!" The words burst from her with impulsive vehemence. His face darkened.