on one of these occasions, however, that he reminded her of her not
having answered a certain question he had put to her during the talk that
had taken place between them on her last birthday. "What is it that
saves _you_?"--saved her, he meant, from that appearance of variation
from the usual human type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she
pretended, by doing, in the most important particular, what most men
do--find the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a sort with a
woman no better than himself--how had she escaped it, and how could the
alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose it had been more or
less noticed, have failed to make her rather positively talked about?

"I never said," May Bartram replied, "that it hadn't made me a good deal
talked about."

"Ah well then you're not 'saved.'"

"It hasn't been a question for me. If you've had your woman I've had,"
she said, "my man."

"And you mean that makes you all right?"

Oh it was always as if there were so much to say!

"I don't know why it shouldn't make me--humanly, which is what we're
speaking of--as right as it makes you."

"I see," Marcher returned. "'Humanly,' no doubt, as showing that you're
living for something. Not, that is, just for me and my secret."

May Bartram smiled. "I don't pretend it exactly shows that I'm not