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RV 239 Feeling that some form of response was required of her, Nona emitted a vague murmur.

"Only now—he's—he's left me," Aggie concluded, the words wrung out of her in laboured syllables. She raised one hand and smoothed back a flat strand of hair which had strayed across her forehead.

Nona was silent. She sat with her eyes fixed on that small twitching mask—real face it could hardly be called, since it had probably never before been suffered to express any emotion that was radically and peculiarly Aggie's.

"You knew that too?" Aggie continued, in a studiously objective tone.

Nona made a sign of assent.

"He has nothing to reproach me with—nothing whatever. He expressly told me so."

"Yes; I know. That's the worst of it."

"The worst of it?"

"Why, if he had, you might have had a good row that would have cleared the air."

Suddenly Nona felt Aggie's eyes fixed on her with a hungry penetrating stare. "Did you and he use to have good rows, as you call it?"

"Oh, by the hour—whenever we met!" Nona, for the life of her, could not subdue the mocking triumph in her voice.

Aggie's lips narrowed. "You've been very great friends, I know; he's often told me so. But if you