Chapter 26 - Page 2

contemplating the Keith on the opposite wall as if he had never seen it before.

She waited with a quiet smile, pleasuring in his unruly impetuousness.

"You can't love two men at once," he flung at her.

"Oh, but I do, Evan. That's what I am trying to work out. Only I don't know which I love more. Dick I have known a long time. You... you are a--"

"Recent acquaintance," he broke in, returning to her with the same angry stride.

"Not that, no, not that, Evan. You have made a revelation to me of myself. I love you as much as Dick. I love you more. I--I don't know."

She broke down and buried her face in her hands, permitting his hand to rest tenderly on her shoulder.

"You see it is not easy for me," she went on. "There is so much involved, so much that I cannot understand. You say you are all at sea. Then think of me all at sea and worse confounded. You--oh, why talk about it--you are a man with a man's experiences, with a man's nature. It is all very simple to you. 'She loves me, she loves me not.' But I am tangled, confused. I--and I wasn't born yesterday--have had no experience in loving variously. I have never had affairs. I loved only one man... and now you. You, and this love for you, have broken into a perfect marriage, Evan--"

"I know--" he said.

"--I don't know," she went on. "I must have time, either to work it out myself or to let it work itself out. If it only weren't for Dick..." her voice trailed off pathetically.

Unconsciously, Graham's hand went farther about her shoulder.

"No, no--not yet," she said softly, as softly she removed it, her own lingering caressingly on his a moment ere she released it. "When you touch me, I can't think," she begged. "I--I can't think."

"Then I must go," he threatened, without any sense of threatening. She made a gesture of protest. "The present situation is impossible, unbearable. I feel like a cur, and all the time I know I am not a cur. I hate deception--oh, I can lie with the Pathan, to the Pathan--but I can't deceive a man like Great Heart. I'd prefer going right up to him and saying: 'Dick, I love your wife. She loves me. What are you going to do about it?'"

"Do so," Paula said, fired for the moment.

Graham straightened up with resolution.

"I will. And now."

"No, no," she cried in sudden panic. "You must go away." Again her voice trailed off, as she said, "But I can't let you go."

* * * * * * *

If Dick had had any reason to doubt his suspicion of the state of Paula's heart, that reason vanished with the return of Graham. He need look nowhere for confirmation save to Paula. She was in a flushed awakening, burgeoning like the