Martie’s face was fixed in a look of agonized attention:  she made no sound.

“She said we wouldn’t have anything to live on,” Wallace pursued, not looking at his wife, “and that she wanted to take a rest when she got married, and have a little fun.  Well, I says, we can keep it quiet for awhile.  Well, we talked about it that day, and after that we would kind of josh about it, and finally one day we walked over to the bureau and got out a license, and the Justice of the Peace—–­ "

“Wallie—­my God!” Martie breathed.

“Well, listen!” he urged her impatiently.  “I put a wrong age on the license and so did she, and she had told me a lot of lies about herself, as I found out later, Martie—–­”

“So that it wasn’t legal!”

“Well, listen.  After that we went on with the crowd for a few weeks, and we didn’t tell anybody.  And then this Dr. Prendergast turned up-—­”

“What Dr. Prendergast!”

“I don’t know who he was—­a dentist anyway.  And he had known Golda before, somewhere, and he was crazy about her.  His wife was getting a divorce, it seems; anyway, he butted right in, and she let him.  I don’t think she had awfully good sense, she would act sort of crazy sometimes, as if she didn’t know what she was doing.  Well, I told her I wouldn’t stand for that, and we had some fights.  But just then my dad wrote and told me that he would finance me for a year at Stanford, and I began to think I’d like to cut the whole bunch.  So I said to Golda:  ’I’m done.  I’m going to get out!  You keep your mouth shut, and I’ll keep mine!’ She says, ’Leon’—­that was Prendergast—­ ‘is going to marry me, and you’ll talk before I do!’ So—–­”

“But, Wallace—–­”

“But what, dearie?”

“But it wasn’t left that way?”

“Now, listen, dearie.  Of course it wasn’t!  She and Prendergast were going to leave town, a few days later, but I was kind of worried about it, and I finally told my uncle the whole story.  Of course he blew up!  He sent for her, and she came right in, scared to death.  He told her that he’d give away the whole story to Prendergast, or else he’d give her a check for five hundred dollars on her wedding day.  She fell for it, and we said good-bye.  She swore it was only a sort of joke anyway, and that the day we—­we did it, she’d been filling me up with whisky lemonades and all that, and that the whole thing was off.  And let me tell you that I was glad to beat it!  I never saw her again until this morning!  I went on the stage, and changed my name because the leading lady in that show happened to be Thelma Tenney.  About a month later my uncle wrote me that she had sent him a newspaper notice of her marriage, and he had sent her the check.  I’ll never forget reading that letter.  I’d been worrying myself black in the face, but that day I went on a bust, I can tell you!”

“That marriage would cancel the other?” Martie asked, with a dry throat.