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 nels. "I wish I were a man," she said, and the effort of uttering words made her conscious of the dryness of her throat. She also had a freakishness of breath to contend with.

Dare collected himself, sat up, with his back partly turned to her, so that his eyes looked over the plain. The breeze had gone down and the afternoon light seemed to be an intrinsic property of the objects it gilded rather than an emanation from the sun.

"What would you do if you were?" he asked.

"The incomparably splendid things you do," she promptly replied.

"I've come pretty near doing some incomparably asinine things."

"But you've stopped short. I would have, too, of course. Besides," she hesitated, then decided on one final plunge of frankness, "in a world full of people who don't do splendid things, you could almost have pleaded justification in not stopping short, I imagine,—if not actual provocation."

She saw his fingers open, then close. For once in her life, just once, she longed to see those strangely intent eyes fixed on her, wanted them to come closer and closer until her own eyes must close, yet she sat weak, watching the back of his head, then his fingers. For the second time in her life,—the first was during Walter Windrom's visit,—she saw deep into the psychology of infidelity: this time more specifically. Indeed with a crudeness that made her blush.