"You don't think as little of him as that!" he cried.
"He—he is the man who married me," she answered unsteadily. "It was—just Monte who married me—honest, easy-going, care-free Monte, who is willing to do a woman a favor even to the extent of marrying her. He is very honest and very gallant and very normal. He likes one day to be as another. He does n't wish to be stirred up. He asked me this, Peter: 'Is n't it possible to care without caring too much?' And I said, 'Yes.' That was why he married me. He had seen others who cared a great deal, and they frightened him. They cared so much that they made themselves uncomfortable, and he feared that."
"Good Lord, you call that man Covington?" exclaimed Peter.
"No—just Monte," Marjory answered quickly. "It's just the outside of him. The man you call Covington—the man inside—is another man."
"It's the real man," declared Peter.
"Yes," she nodded, with a catch in her voice. "That's the real man. But—don't you understand?—it was n't that man who married me. It was Monte who married me to escape Covington. He trusted me not to disturb the real man, just as I trusted him not to disturb the real me."
Peter leaned forward with a new hope in his eyes.
"Then," he said, "perhaps, after all, he did n't get to the real you."
Quite simply she replied:—
"He did, Peter. He does not know it, but he did."