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Rh furiously; you were extravagant in your promises. I believed and promised to be your wife—you have it in your power to make good these promises, but you have forgotten that I and others may think that you owe something to me regardless of—this change in you! Wait a minute! I'm not through!" Taylor dropped his hands limply and listened. "All my closest friends, all your best friends, those who know the most about us, those who had our confidence, knew that I had given my word to marry you. They talk about you and gush over the way you have developed, when all they want to know is why you've changed in your attitude toward me—the cats! They held up all their plans yesterday to see if you would come, and when you didn't they tried to say that they were sorry, when I knew that they felt that it served me right for trusting you at all.

"There's another thing: How it affects me, here," a hand on her breast. "I put my trust in you; you made a solemn compact and now, on a whim, you ditch me—because you don't want to make money! Because you want to become a sort of evangelist, you begin by trampling a girl's heart and making her a laughing stock. Have you no pride, John Taylor? Have you no shame?"

Her questions stung like the bite of a leash. He could not know what went on in her cool little mind, could not know the meanness of her own heart at that moment. For him, who believed he had known women, Marcia had been worthy of his trust; for him she had been sweet and gentle, honest and without guile. He could not know of the nights she had been with Phil Howe, playing him, holding him at once aloof and her prisoner; he could not guess the tensity and intelligence with which she had