"So now—it is over?" He spoke very softly yet with a sense of relief.
Marian's eyes held his own with their remarkably candid gaze, making no effort to mask their misery. Her finely shaped head carried itself high as if in disdain for all dissimulation, and once more she went on in a forced evenness:
"Yes, now it's over, but I'm not through talking. Please don't interrupt me. I've said too much to let it rest there and I've got to say the rest in my own fashion." She paused, then went resolutely forward. "You had spoken to me of Miss Williams, but—you know you were always reticent about the things you felt deeply—I didn't know enough to thoroughly understand. In the last year I've done a lot of thinking.... The point from which I always started was obvious. If you had cared at all about me, you would have looked me up—when the divorce was ended.... But later I heard of her marriage—Miss Williams'.... Perhaps, I told myself, things were different with you now. I heard of you from time to time ... and never as of one who was very happy."
She paused and Stuart laid a hand gently on hers, but she withdrew her own and began afresh:
"I don't care for the word 'chastened,' but I knew that I'd learned some things. I knew that I wasn't that same woman any more. The irresponsible lightness had been pretty well cured ... and I wasn't very happy, either.
"Marian," he declared feelingly, "you don't have to defend yourself to me. The man who won your love could feel nothing but pride."
"Thank you," she said briefly. "I'm not through yet.... I thought that if you met the new me ... you might revise your old opinion.... I thought at least that I could study you and that afterward there would be no uncertainty.... You spoke of the coincidence of our meeting. There was no coincidence about it. I was traveling more or less at random, but I knew you must come through Yokohama and I waylaid you. When Jimmy Hancock told me at the chance that you were taking this boat, I took it, too.... It meant ten days in which to study you—but I needed only ten seconds. I saw your face when we met on deck ... and that told me all there was to tell."