“Mother had a nurse, and I was alone a great deal, and they were very kind to me.  I—­I saw a lot of them.  The brother rather attracted me, partly—­partly because he did not make love to me.  He even seemed to avoid me, and I was piqued.  I had been spoiled, I suppose.  Most of the other men I knew had—­had—­”

“I know that, too,” I said bitterly, and moved away from her a trifle.  I was brutal, but the whole story was a long torture.  I think she knew what I was suffering, for she showed no resentment.

“It was early and there were few people around—­none that I cared about.  And mother and the nurse played cribbage eternally, until I felt as though the little pegs were driven into my brain.  And when Mrs. Curtis arranged drives and picnics, I—­I slipped away and went.  I suppose you won’t believe me, but I had never done that kind of thing before, and I—­well, I have paid up, I think.”

“What sort of looking chap was Sullivan?” I demanded.  I had got up and was pacing back and forward on the sand.  I remember kicking savagely at a bit of water-soaked board that lay in my way.

“Very handsome—­as large as you are, but fair, and even more erect.”

I drew my shoulders up sharply.  I am straight enough, but I was fairly sagging with jealous rage.

“When mother began to get around, somebody told her that I had been going about with Mrs. Curtis and her brother, and we had a dreadful time.  I was dragged home like a bad child.  Did anybody ever do that to you?”

“Nobody ever cared.  I was born an orphan,” I said, with a cheerless attempt at levity.  “Go on.”

“If Mrs. Curtis knew, she never said anything.  She wrote me charming letters, and in the summer, when they went to Cresson, she asked me to visit her there.  I was too proud to let her know that I could not go where I wished, and so—­I sent Polly, my maid, to her aunt’s in the country, pretended to go to Seal Harbor, and really went to Cresson.  You see I warned you it would be an unpleasant story.”

I went over and stood in front of her.  All the accumulated jealousy of the last few weeks had been fired by what she told me.  If Sullivan had come across the sands just then, I think I would have strangled him with my hands, out of pure hate.

“Did you marry him?” I demanded.  My voice sounded hoarse and strange in my ears.  “That’s all I want to know.  Did you marry him?”

“No.”

I drew a long breath.

“You—­cared about him?”

She hesitated.

“No,” she said finally.  “I did not care about him.”

I sat down on the edge of the boat and mopped my hot face.  I was heartily ashamed of myself, and mingled with my abasement was a great relief.  If she had not married him, and had not cared for him, nothing else was of any importance.

“I was sorry, of course, the moment the train had started, but I had wired I was coming, and I could not go back, and then when I got there, the place was charming.  There were no neighbors, but we fished and rode and motored, and—­it was moonlight, like this.”