"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."
The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.
"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to each other not to know everything there is to know."
"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly—and she herself had chosen. "He's merely given me up."
"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something else as well, something akin to exultation.
"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."
"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"
Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old pride, broke forth.
"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before this if he objected?" she flamed.
"Bess!"