lendar had told her that at last Sabine was divorcing him. He had not asked her to do it. She had told him that she could endure the situation no longer. For the part which Thérèse played in the affair, he could not answer. "I don't know," he had said, smiling. "Sabine will say nothing and my mother denies having spoken of the matter. But if she saw fit she would not hesitate to lie deliberately. Sometimes I think she is not clever, and then afterward I find she has been stupid only because it suited her, because her stupidity was dictated by a devilish shrewdness."
And then he had told her of all the tricks Thérèse had played to bring about his remarriage, of how she had written him glowing letters about Ellen. "All she wrote," he added, "was true, of course. You can hardly doubt that. Still, it was not the way to bring it about."
And Ellen too had laughed and told of her interview with Thérèse in the library of the house at Murray Hill on the night of her concert, and at last she had asked abruptly, "Am I to interpret all this as a proposal?"
"My mother knew that there was no one else whom I would think of marrying. There was no need to marry at all."
After this speech she had been silent for a time and when at last she looked up at him it was to ask, "And you want to marry me because it is the only way you can have me?"
"No."
Her mind wandered back to the hot afternoon in the Babylon Arms when he had so nearly swept away all her self-possession. He had been different then, more ardent, more overwhelming, and yet she knew that the danger then had not been so great as it was in this very moment when he sat beside her in the big room, quiet and thoughtful, watching her with a fierce concentration.
"But there was a time," she said slowly, "when you would have taken me in any way possible without marrying me."
He was sitting with his body bent forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. The hands were tense so that the knuckles showed through the tanned, dark skin.
