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 wish than deliberately to keep Cecily in ignorance, and the discovery that he had inadvertently done so dumbfounded him. "Why," he stammered, "I—I just took it for granted you knew! I thought of course you knew, from the start! It never entered my head once that you'd need to be told—I—why, you've seen us together—you spent that one night and a couple of afternoons with Yvonne, I supposed naturally she'd tell you"

"She told me you weren't," said Cecily very distinctly.

Then Jock swerved the roadster to the right and brought it alongside the curb, and turned off the switch. He shifted in his seat so that he faced Cecily's profile, outlined against the yellow of a near shop window. Even in his abstraction, he gave a little mental salute to the cameo perfection of that profile.

"Cecily," he said, "what do you mean?"

"Exactly what I say. Yvonne told me you and she were not going to be married." The profile was lost unexpectedly, and Cecily's eyes were wide and dark on his. "I asked her," she stated. "I asked her that first morning when you brought me back to her apartment after breakfast. She came into the bedroom with me while I collected my own things to go home with, remember?—and I said, 'Are you and Jock engaged or anything?' I thought maybe you were—she's so marvelous-looking, and you seemed to know each other so well. But she just laughed, and kissed me, and said, 'No, my dear, we're just friends and business partners—and that's all we ever will be.

All we ever will be?

"That's what she said. She's said it since, too, several times."

"Well I'm damned!"