"Oh, she wants anything she can get! She doesn't know that I'm married. If she did, I suppose she might make herself unpleasant along that line!"
"But she has no claim on you! She married another man!"
"She says now that she never was married to Prendergast!"
"But she WAS!" Martie said hotly. Her voice dropped vaguely. Her eyes were fixed and glassy with growing apprehension. "Perhaps she was lying about that," she whispered, as if to herself.
"She'd lie about anything!" Wallace supplied.
"But if she wasn't, Wallace, if she wasn't—then would that second marriage cancel the first?" she asked feverishly.
"I should THINK so!" he answered. "Shouldn't you?"
"Shouldn't I?" she echoed, with her first flash of anger. "Why, what do I know about it? What do I know about it? I don't know anything! You come to me with this now—NOW!"
"Don't talk like that!" he pleaded. "I feel—I feel awfully about it, Martie! I can't tell you how I feel! But the whole thing was so long ago it had sort of gone out of my mind. Every fellow does things that he's ashamed of, Mart—things that he's sorry for; but you always think that you'll marry some day, and have kids, and that the world will go on like it always has——"
The fire suddenly died out of Martie. In a deadly calm she sat back against her pillows, and began to gather up her masses of loosened hair.