"That's a strong word!" Garth blurted out. They were standing in the middle of the room, eyeing each other as might a pair of duellists obliged to fight over some technical dispute. "Have I been so brutal to you as all that?" "You haven't been brutal lately. You were--_dreadfully_--at first." "H'm! You weren't exactly angelic to me." "There's nothing very angelic in the--in the affair." "What, precisely, do you mean by 'the affair'?" "The--er--bargain." "I thought I'd convinced you that the 'bargain' had collapsed." "Well, our--marriage, then, if you like that better. I've wondered every minute what you did marry me for, if it wasn't money. And sometimes I think it couldn't have been, because you seem to have plenty of your own. Still----" "Some men with plenty could do with more. Is that what you'd say?" "I'm not sure what I'd say--about you." "I suppose you think that a million dollars would always be worth having. I'm sure your mother would think that." "The question is, not what _we'd_ think, but what you thought--when you married me." Garth looked at her for a moment in silence, as if weighing his answer, wondering whether to stick to his fixed plan of remoteness, or risk "giving himself away." "Do you remember any of the things I said to you the first day we met?" he asked at last. "Yes, I remember you thought--then--you lo--you admired me a good deal. But you were a different man that day from what you were afterwards." "You're right! I was. A different man. The word you broke off just now was the one word for what I felt. Only it didn't express half. I loved you with all there was of me. I adored and worshipped you. But--I don't believe you've ever been in love yourself except on the surface, or I'd ask you how much you think love can stand, and live?" Marise felt the blood pour up to her cheeks and tingle in the tips of her ears. So it was true that he _didn't_ love her now! The thought hurt her vanity. She hated to believe that a man who'd loved her once could _un_love her in a few days or weeks. But it annoyed her very much to flush. She wished to look entirely unmoved. Instead, she wanted to cry. "Please do tell me once for all _why_ you married me if it wasn't either for love or money!" she said crossly, with a quiver in her voice. "When one makes a bold move on the chessboard--the chessboard of life--there are often several motives," Garth replied. "Sometimes it's to save the queen from being taken by an enemy piece. Perhaps that was my principal motive, who can tell?--I don't know just what piece to compare with Severance, though with a _card_ it would be easy. He's not a knight. Nor yet a bishop. We might call him a castle. I hear he's got one--which needs a bit of doing up before it would suit a queen." "You married me only to keep Tony Severance from getting me?" "That might have had something to do with it." "Not for the million?" "I leave you to guess that, from what you say you know of me."