“What difference does that make?” she whispered.  “What difference can it make?  Oh, you mustn’t tell me these things, I mustn’t listen.  I mustn’t.”

“But they’re terribly, tragically true,” Monohan returned.  “Look at me, Stella.  Don’t turn your face away, dear.  I wouldn’t do anything that might bring the least shadow on you.  I know the pitiful hopelessness of it.  You’re fettered, and there’s no apparent loophole to freedom.  I know it’s best for me to keep this locked tight in my heart, as something precious and sorrowful.  I never meant to tell you.  But the flesh isn’t always equal to the task the spirit imposes.”

She did not answer him immediately, for she was struggling for a grip on herself, fighting back an impulse to lay her head against him and cry her agony out on his breast.  All the resources of will that she possessed she called upon now to still that tumult of emotion that racked her.  When she did speak, it was in a hard, strained tone.  But she faced the issue squarely, knowing beyond all doubt what she had to face.

“Whether I care or not isn’t the question,” she said.  “I’m neither little enough nor prudish enough to deny a feeling that’s big and clean.  I see no shame in that.  I’m afraid of it—­if you can understand that.  But that’s neither here nor there.  I know what I have to do.  I married without love, with my eyes wide open, and I have to pay the price.  So you must never talk to me of love.  You mustn’t even see me, if it can be avoided.  It’s better that way.  We can’t make over our lives to suit ourselves—­at least I can’t.  I must play the game according to the only rules I know.  We daren’t—­we mustn’t trifle with this sort of a feeling.  With you—­footloose, and all the world before you—­it’ll die out presently.”

“No,” he flared.  “I deny that.  I’m not an impressionable boy.  I know myself.”

He paused, and the grip of his hands on hers tightened till the pain of it ran to her elbows.  Then his fingers relaxed a little.

“Oh, I know,” he said haltingly.  “I know it’s got to be that way.  I have to go my road and leave you to yours.  Oh, the blank hopelessness of it, the useless misery of it.  We’re made for each other, and we have to grin and say good-by, go along our separate ways, trying to smile.  What a devilish state of affairs!  But I love you, dear, and no matter—­I—­ah—­”

His voice flattened out.  His hands released hers, he straightened quickly.  Stella turned her head.  Jack Fyfe stood in the doorway.  His face was fixed in its habitual mask.  He was biting the end off a cigar.  He struck a match and put it to the cigar end with steady fingers as he walked slowly across the big room.

“I hear the kid peeping,” he said to Stella quite casually, “and I noticed Martha outside as I came in.  Better go see what’s up with him.”

Trained to repression, schooled in self-control, Stella rose to obey, for under the smoothness of his tone there was the iron edge of command.  Her heart apparently ceased to beat.  She tried to smile, but she knew that her face was tear-wet.  She knew that Jack Fyfe had seen and understood.  She had done no wrong, but a terrible apprehension of consequences seized her, a fear that tragedy of her own making might stalk grimly in that room.