large mouthful of smoke, which leisurely he blew forth. It circled about her. She moved away. “Oh, excuse me,” he said, “I did not mean—” The girl made a gesture of indifference. “You see,” he began again, “the point is just here. My mother is not well. She rather wants me with her this summer. In the circumstances I thought you might like to go abroad.”
Marie, through half-closed eyes, cautiously peered at him. “Without you?” she asked.
Loftus nodded.
“For good?”
To this Loftus made no answer. Provided she went, though it were for bad, he did not much care.
Marie, who had been standing, crossed the room and recrossed it. A year before she had suggested the kitten. Where that had been the leopard had come. In her movements were the same supple ease, the same grace and alertness. Suddenly at the table where he sat she stopped, rested a hand on it and bending a little looked him in the face.
“Liar,” she muttered. “Liar! I know and so do you. Yes, I knew it almost from the first, but, though I knew it, I tried as hard to deceive myself as you did to deceive me. You never intended to marry me, not for a moment, not even at the moment when you called God to witness that you would.”
Her hand had gone from the table, from it and him she turned away.
Loftus, who at the arraignment had retreated a full inch in his chair, called after her. “It is untrue; what I said, I meant.”
Marie turned back. “Then if you meant it, marry me this night. If you have any honor, any whatever, a spark of it, you will; if not—”