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 to crush her breathing while she thought. At last she said: "Of course I'm not, David. Are you all right?"

"What do you mean by all right?"

"What you do, David."

"I'm all right," David declared.

"Perfectly happy?"

"Of course."

"Then you've changed a lot!"

This caught him up; he expected nothing like it. "How've I changed?"

"You're not living with her very much as you planned to live with me."

He made no reply and she proceeded. "You never talked about a hotel to me; and we—we were going to have children, David, weren't we?"

She made him answer "Yes."

"We talked over the number. We'd have four; not six, like your parents, but four about two years and a half apart. You thought that would be best for me. Wasn't that it?"

His hand brushed hers as he moved it and she drew hers from touch of him with whom she had talked over having children; and she said:

"It's funny how I keep thinking about your business, David. That ten thousand dollars we used to talk about—the last time I asked you about it, you hadn't paid it back yet; but you have now, of course."

"No; I haven't, Alice."

"You haven't. Why? It's queer for me to be asking, David, but that special ten thousand got to be a sort of debt of mine in my mind, once. You see, I thought, when we borrowed it—for we did in a way do