She showed her amusement. "They've a much better right to say it's none of mine." "Painful?" Mrs. Gereth stared. "What pain can I ever feel again?"!

"Do you really think so?" Fleda presently inquired. "I mean, does he, after the fact, as it were, accept it?" Mrs. Gereth shook her head with slow austerity. "You don't believe a word you're saying. I've frightened you, as you've frightened me: you're whistling in the dark to keep up our courage. I do simplify, doubtless, if to simplify is to fail to comprehend the insanity of a passion that bewilders a young blockhead with bugaboo barriers, with hideous and monstrous sacrifices. I can only repeat that you're beyond me. Your perversity's a thing to howl over. However," the poor woman continued with a break in her voice, a long hesitation and then the dry triumph of her will, "I'll never mention it to you again! Owen I can just make out; for Owen is a blockhead. Owen's a blockhead," she repeated with a quiet, tragic finality, looking straight into Fleda's eyes. "I don't know why you dress up so the fact that he's disgustingly weak."

Mrs. Gereth took her up with a cold smile that seemed the warning of experience against hyperbole. "As long as what, please?" "I'm thinking," Fleda continued, "of the simple question of his keeping faith on an important clause of his contract: it doesn't matter whether it's with a stupid girl or with a monster of cleverness. I'm thinking of his honor and his good name." "Wouldn't it perhaps after all be better," she asked, "before doing this, to see if we can make his whereabouts certain?"