“Jim,” she said bravely, “does it mean nothing to you that there were other women in your life before you knew me?”

“Dearest,” he answered seriously and quickly, “God knows that I would cut my hand off to be able to blot that all out of my boyhood.  Those things mean nothing to a man, Ju, and they meant less to me than to most men.  Women can’t understand that, but if you knew how men regard it, you would realize that very few can bring their wives as clean a record as mine!”

He had said this much before, never anything more.  Julia, looking at him now with all the tragic sorrow of her life in her magnificent eyes, felt the utter impossibility of convincing him that this accusation on her part, and bravely boyish and honest confession on his, had any logical or possible connection with the momentous conversation that they were having to-night.  Her heart recoiled in sick terror from any word that would hurt or estrange him now, but she might have found that word, and might have said it, could she have hoped that it would convey her meaning to him.  But Jim’s standard of morals, for himself, was, like that of most men, still the college standard.  It was too bad to have clouded the bright mirror, but it was inevitable, given youth and red blood.  And it was admirable to regret it all now.  Any fresh attempt on Julia’s part to bring to his realization the parallel in their situations, would have elicited from him only fresh, youthful acknowledgments, until that second when anger and astonishment at her bold effort to reduce the two distinct codes to one would end this talk—­like so many others!—­with new coldnesses and silences.  Julia abandoned this line of argument once and for all.

“I never cared for any one but you in my life, Jim,” she said, with dry lips.

“I know,” he muttered, brushing his hair back with an impatient hand.  A second later he came to kneel penitently before her.  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said pleadingly.  “You’re a little angel of forgiveness to me—­I don’t deserve it!  I know how I make you suffer!”

“Jim,” she said, feeling old, and tired, and cold to her heart’s core, “do you think you do?”

“I know how I suffer!” he answered bitterly.

“Jim, suppose it was something you had done long ago that I couldn’t forgive?”

“It isn’t a question of forgiveness,” he answered quickly.  “Forgiveness—­when you are the sweetest and best wife a man ever had!  No, darling,” he caught both her hands in his own, “you must never think that, it’s never that!  It’s only my mad, crazy jealousy.  I tell you I’m ashamed of it, and I am!  Just be patient with me, Julia!”

Julia stared at him a few moments silently, her hands locked about his neck.

“Ah, but you worry me so when you’re like this, Jim,” she said presently, in the gentle, troubled tone a mother might use.  “There seems to be nothing I can do.  I can only worry and wait!”