direct answer then is: if I were still Fanny Frisbee I would marry
you."

He bent toward her persuasively. "But you will be--when the divorce
is pronounced."

"Ah, the divorce--" She flushed deeply, with an instinctive
shrinking back of her whole person which made him straighten himself
in his chair.

"Do you so dislike the idea?"

"The idea of divorce? No--not in my case. I should like anything
that would do away with the past--obliterate it all--make everything
new in my life!"

"Then what--?" he began again, waiting with the patience of a wooer
on the uneasy circling of her tormented mind.

"Oh, don't ask me; I don't know; I am frightened."

Durham gave a deep sigh of discouragement. "I thought your coming
here with me today--and above all your going with me just now to see
my mother--was a sign that you were _not_ frightened!"

"Well, I was not when I was with your mother. She made everything
seem easy and natural. She took me back into that clear American air
where there are no obscurities, no mysteries--"

"What obscurities, what mysteries, are you afraid of?"