"In the first place, eh? And what does he mean in the second?" He paused so long for a reply that Fleda said: "I don't think I know what you mean by a set-to."!

"For me?" Fleda stared. "Before he has even married her?" "Why not, with such a studied omission on his part to gloss over in any manner the painful tension existing between them—the painful tension that, under providence, I've been the means of bringing about? He gives you by his silence clear notice that his marriage is practically off."

She had once more disengaged herself, with the private vow that he shouldn't yet touch her again. It was all too horribly soon—her sense of this was rapidly surging back. "We mustn't talk, we mustn't talk; we must wait!" she intensely insisted. "I don't know what you mean by your freedom; I don't see it, I don't feel it. Where is it yet, where, your freedom? If it's real there's plenty of time, and if it isn't there's more than enough. I hate myself," she protested, "for having anything to say about her: it's like waiting for dead men's shoes! What business is it of mine what she does? She has her own trouble and her own plan. It's too hideous to watch her and count on her!" Owen waited long enough to take in the question; then with a serenity startling even to her knowledge of his nature, "I don't think I can have really loved her, you know," he replied. "I haven't the least idea," Fleda repeated.