any rate, you didn't claim youth when Gray asked you to marry him--
though you may have done so afterward. Did you?"

She kept silent. But her eyes ran over him with contempt. According
to her, she had given him no right to put such questions.

He ignored it. It was undeserved. It was she who deserved contempt,
not he. And he threw it back at her in a strange incoherent outburst
in which, all the same, there was a vibrating note of gladness and
relief. And all the while, unmoved by the passion into which he
broke, she stood watching with a curious gravity his no longer
immobile face. She was thinking about Martin. She was redeveloping
Martin's expression when she had opened the door of her bedroom the
night of her marriage and let him out. What about her creed, then?
Was she hiding behind youthfulness? Were there, after all, certain
things that must be paid for? Was she already old enough to be what
Alice and this man called honest? Was every man made of the stuff
that only gave for what he hoped to get in return?

His words trailed off. He was wasting them, he saw. She was looking
through his head. But he rejoiced as to one thing like a potter who
opens the door of his oven and finds his masterpiece unbroken. And
silence fell upon them, interrupted only by the intermittent humming
of passing cars.

Finally Palgrave took the cigarette box out of Joan's hand and put
it down on a little table and stood looking more of a man than might
have been expected.

"I've always hoped that one day I should meet you--just you," he