* * * * *

She went to bed with her knowledge. He funked and lied. The two things
she couldn't stand. His funk and his lying were a real part of him. And
it was as if she had always known it, as if all the movements of her mind
had been an effort to escape her knowledge.

She opened her eyes. Something hurt them. Gwinnie, coming late to bed,
had turned on the electric light. And as she rolled over, turning her
back to the light and to Gwinnie, her mind shifted. It saw suddenly the
flame leaping in John's face. His delight in danger, that happiness he
felt when he went out to meet it, happiness springing up bright and new
every day; that was a real part of him. She couldn't doubt it. She knew.
And she was left with her queer, baffled sense of surprise and
incompleteness. She couldn't see the nature of the bond between these two
realities.

That was his secret, his mystery.




XII


She woke very early in the morning with one clear image in her mind: what
John had done yesterday.

Her mind seemed to have watched all night behind her sleep to attack her
with it in the first moment of waking. She had got to come to a clear