"That's not enough."

"You don't want much, do you?" she murmured.

"Everything or nothing now. You know I'm free."

She nodded. "I can see what's coming," she said with a pretence of demureness. "If you've hopped across those four thousand miles from a sense of duty to the weeping girl that you left behind——"

"Pat!"

"Don't bark at me. It frazzles my nerves. I haven't done any weeping over you, Cary. Too busy with the thrills of life. Would you have come back, I wonder, if you could have known everything that's been going on. Suppose I'd stayed in Boston that time?"

"Well?"

"Wouldn't that make a difference?"

"In my wanting to marry you? No."

"Suppose," she said more slowly, "I'd had an affair, a real affair with Monty. Like ours."