He lifted my hand to his lips. "There is no one but you I would talk
to of this. You will not misunderstand. If I could not come to
you--"

I drew my hand away. "That's what a woman is for, to--to stand by
when a man needs her." My words came stammeringly. "I heard Harrie
was away. Where is he and why did he go?"

"He's in Texas. He went, I think, because of a mix-up with a girl
here he had no business knowing. There was a row, I believe."
Selwyn frowned, flicked the ashes from his cigar with impatient
movement. "There's no use going into that. I'm not excusing him;
there's no excuse, but so far as that's concerned there's nothing to
be done, so far as I can see. He got involved with this girl, a
little cashier at some restaurant downtown who thought he was going
to marry her. I knew nothing about this until a few weeks ago. When
I heard it, I went to see the girl."

The tension of past weeks, not yet entirely unrelaxed, snapped with
such swiftness that I seemed suffocating, and, lest he hear the sob
in my throat, I got up and went over to the window and opened it a
little. "Was she--" I made effort to speak steadily. "Was she the
girl who was brought in here? The girl you were with some three
weeks ago?"

Selwyn, who had gotten up as I came back to the sofa, again sat down.
"Yes. She was the girl." His voice was indifferently even. He had
obviously no suspicion of my unworthy wondering, had forgotten,
indeed, his indignation at the question I had asked him after seeing