"Oh, Ley, Ley—but tell me!"
"There is so little to tell," he said, wearily. "I cannot tell you all. This will suffice, that to-night I expected and hoped to have been able to call her my wife, instead—well, you see, I am sitting here!"
"Your wife?" she murmured. "Stella Etheridge your wife. Was that—that wise, Ley?"
"Wise! What have I to do with wisdom?" he retorted. "I loved her—loved her passionately, madly, as I never, nor shall ever, love another woman! Heaven help me, I love her now! Don't you see that is the worst part of it. I know, as surely as I am sitting here, that my life has gone. It has gone to pieces on the rocks like a goodly ship, and there is an end of it!"
There was silence for a moment, then she spoke, and, woman-like, her thoughts were of the woman.
"But she, Ley? How is it with her?"
He laughed again, and the gentle girl shuddered.
"Don't Ley," she murmured.
"She will be all right," he said. "Women are made like that—all excepting one," and he touched her dress.
"And yet—and yet," she murmured, troubled and sorrowful, "now I look back I am sure that she loved you, Ley! I remember her face, the look of her eyes, the way she spoke your name. Oh, Ley, she loved you!"