“Good God!  No.”

“If we—­” he used the pronoun unconsciously—­“can establish that, there may be some way of keeping the details from the public.  Suppose you start at the beginning—­and tell me what there is to tell?”

She hesitated.  “Everything?”

“Everything—­or nothing.  A portion of the story will not help either of us.  Of course you don’t have to—­”

Impulsively she leaned forward.  “There is something about you, Mr. Carroll, which makes me trust you.  I feel that you are a friend rather than an enemy.”

He bowed gratefully.  “Thank you.”

“It really began shortly after my marriage to Mr. Lawrence—­” she had started her story before she knew it.  “I knew that I had made a mistake.  He is nearly thirteen years older than I—­a man of icy disposition, a nature which is cruel in its frigidity.  I am not that—­that kind of a woman, Mr. Carroll.  I should not have married that type of man.

“He was good enough to me in his own peculiar way.  I have a little money of my own:  he is wealthy.  He liked to dress me up and show me off.  He was liberal with money—­if not with kindness—­when there was trouble in my family.  After my parents died he allowed Evelyn to live with us.  They have never liked one another—­the more reason why I am grateful to him for allowing her to remain in the house.

“That is the life we have led together.  We have long since ceased to have anything in common.  He has kept to himself and I have remained alone.  So far as the world knew—­our home life was tranquil.  Unbearably so—­to a nature like mine which loves love—­and life.

“I grew to hate my husband as a man much as I admired him in certain ways for his brain and his achievement.  Our individualities are millions of miles apart.  There was no oneness in our married life.  And gradually he learned that I hated him—­and he became contemptuous.  That stung my pride.  He didn’t care.  I felt—­felt unsexed!

“No need to go into further detail.  Sufficient to say that I became desperate for a little affection, a little kindness, a little recognition of the fact that I am a woman—­and a not entirely unattractive one.  It was about then that I met Roland Warren.

“I wonder if you understand women, Mr. Carroll?  I wonder if it is possible for you to comprehend their psychological reactions?  Because if you cannot—­you will never understand what Roland Warren meant to me.  You will never understand the condition which has led to—­this tragedy.”

She paused and Carroll nodded.  “You can trust me to understand.”

“I believe you do.  I believe you understand something of what was going on within me when Roland came into my life.  In the light of what has transpired, the fact that I was neglected by my husband seems absurd—­trivial.  But it is not absurd—­it is not trivial!

“Mr. Warren was kind to me.  He was attentive—­courteous—­I believe that he really loved me.  I may have been fooled, of course.  Starved as I was for the affection of a man, I may have been blind to the sincerity of his protestations.  But I believed him.