"Carlton Dunlap," she added in a tone that rasped his very soul, "I
am nobody's fool. I may not know much about bookkeeping and
accounting, but I can add--and two and two, when the same man but
different women compose each two, do not make four, according to my
arithmetic, but three, from which,"--she finished almost
hysterically the little speech she had prepared, but it seemed to
fall flat before the man's curiously altered manner--"from which I
shall subtract one."

She burst into tears.

"Listen," he urged, taking her arm gently to lead her to an easy-
chair.

"No, no, no!" she cried, now thoroughly aroused, with eyes that
again snapped accusation and defiance at him, "don't touch me. Talk
to me, if you want to, but don't, don't come near me." She was now
facing him, standing in the high-ceilinged "studio," as they called
the room where she had kept up in a desultory manner for her own
amusement the art studies which had interested her before her
marriage. "What is it that you want to say? The other nights you
said nothing at all. Have you at last thought up an excuse? I hope
it is at least a clever one."

"Constance," he remonstrated, looking fearfully about. Instinctively
she felt that her accusation was unjust. Not even that had dulled
the hunted look in his face. "Perhaps--perhaps if it were that of
which you suspect me, we could patch it up. I don't know. But,
Constance, I--I must leave for the west on the first train in the
morning." He did not pause to notice her startled look, but raced