"You don't want to stagger on in the dark any longer. You'll let me tell him."
She rose to her feet, her face white.
"Peter," she said slowly, "if ever you told him that, I'd never forgive you. If ever you told him, I 'd deny it. You 'd only force me into more lies. You'd only crush me lower."
"Steady, Marjory," he said.
"You're wonderful, Peter!" she exclaimed. "You 've—you 've been seeing visions. But when you speak of telling him what I've told you, you don't understand how terrible that would be. Peter—you'll promise me you won't do that?"
She was pleading, with panic in her eyes.
"Yet, if he knew, he'd come racing to you."
"He'd do that because he's a gentleman and four-square. He'd come to me and pretend. He'd feel himself at fault, and pity me. Do you know how it hurts a woman to be pitied? I'd rather he'd hate me. I'd rather he'd forget me altogether.",
"But what of the talks I had with him in the dark?" he questioned. "When he talked to me of you then, it was not in pity."
"Because,"—she choked,—"because he does n't know himself as I know him. He—he does n't like changes—dear Monte. It disturbed him to go because it would have been so much easier to have stayed. So, for the moment, he may have been—a bit sentimental."