From the time when Dr. Osterhout assured her of her secret's safety, Pat knew that she must tell her fiancÉ, before the wedding. Some quirk of feminine psychology would have justified her in concealment, so long as there was risk. The chances of the game! But to go forward upon the path of marriage in perfect safety and with an unsuspecting mate—that was, in her mind, mean. Curiosity, too, that restless, morbid craving to know what exciting thing would result, pressed her. The daring experimentalist was rampant within her. How would Monty take it? What would he do?

... How should she tell him?...

Opportunity paved the way. A group of her set were at Holiday Knoll on a Saturday evening, discussing the local sensation of the day. Generously measured highballs had been distributed, and in the dim conservatory, lighted only by the glow of cigarettes, they discussed the event. A betrothed girl of another suburb had committed suicide after the breaking of her engagement and gossip ascribed the tragedy to the inopportune discovery of an old love affair. With the freedom of the modern flapper, Margaret Thorne, half lying in the arms of Nick Torrance on the settee, declared the position:

"It was the Teddy Barnaby business. Two years ago we all thought they were engaged."

"Weren't they?" asked someone.

"More or less," asseverated the sprightly Miss Thorne. "Chiefly more, from all accounts. Then Johnny Dupuy came here to live, and she shifted her young affections to him and caught him."

"Do you think he found out about Teddy?"

"Sure—like—a—Bible."

"How?"

"Why pick on me for a hard one like that?"

"Perhaps she told him," suggested one of the other girls.

"She wouldn't be such a boob; no girl would," offered a languid girlish voice.

"It'd be the square thing to do." This was a masculine opinion, and jejune, even for that crowd.

"Don't know—yah!" declared Miss Thorne, meaning to express her contempt for this view. "It was up to Dupuy to look in the mare's mouth before he bought."

The discussion played about the subject with daring sallies and prurient relish, the final conclusion of the majority being that the fiancÉ had "got wise" and the girl had killed herself because he broke the engagement, "as any fellow would" (Monty Standish's contribution, this last).

"What if she did go to him and own up?" suggested Selden Thorpe.

"It'd be just the same," opined Standish. "He'd have to quit."

"Oh, I don't know. It doesn't follow."

"Wouldn't you?"

"I don't know that I would. It depends."

"You'd be a pretty poor sort of fish if you wouldn't."

"Maybe, if I thought as you do. But we don't all think the same."

"Some of us don't think at all," put in Pat acidly. "We just talk."

"Meaning which, Treechy?" inquired Torrance.

"Oh, nothing!"

"I know John Dupuy," proceeded Thorpe. "He isn't just exactly the one to draw lines too strictly."

"I grant you that Johnnie would never win the diamond-set chastity belt of the world's championship," said the daring Miss Thorne, and elicited a chorus of appreciative mirth.

Pat did not join in it. She was thinking fast and hard.

After the rest had gone Monty stayed on, as of right. Something in Pat's expression struck even his torpid perceptions, as he put his arm around her and drew her to him for the customary "petting party."

"What's all the gloom about, sweetie?"

She released herself not over-gently. "Monty, would you have done what Dupuy did?"

"How do you mean?"

"Broken off your engagement—on that account?"

"Why, yes. Any fellow would." A convincing reason, for him.

"Selden Thorpe wouldn't."

"I'll bet he would. He's a bluff. He makes me sick."

"Well—then—you'd better break ours."

"I don't get you, Pat."

"It's been the same with me as with Elsie Dowden. I've been meaning to tell you."

"I don't believe it," he said violently. "It's a try-on. A trick."

"It's true. You've got to believe it."

"Who's the man?" bayed Monty like a huge dog.

"I'll never tell you."

He gathered his powerful frame together as if to spring upon her. If he did, if he beat her to the ground, choked her into helplessness, Pat thought, she would hate him and love him for it. But his rage ebbed, impotent of its culmination, a little pitiful, a little ridiculous.

"Wh-wh-what did you do it for?" It was almost a whimper.

"I don't know. I didn't mean to—at the beginning."

"Did you love him?"

"Yes. I thought I did."

"You love him now," he charged, his fury mounting again.

"I don't! I love you."

"This is a hell of a thing to tell a man you say you love," he faltered plaintively.

"You'd rather I hadn't told you. I'm not built that way! I had to tell."

Instantly he was suspicious. "Had to? Why did you have to?"

"Not for any reason that you'd understand." The slight emphasis on the "you" was the first touch of bitterness she had allowed herself.

"Wouldn't he marry you?"

"I wouldn't marry him."

Monty perceptibly brightened. Pat's womanly intuitions, supersensitised by the strain of the contest, told her why. If, to his male standards, she was a maiden despoiled, she was at least not a woman scorned; her rating had gone up sensibly.

"Where is he now?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him for a long time. I'll never see him again."

"Pat," with an air of resolute magnanimity—"if you'll tell me who it was I'll marry you anyway."

At that her pale cheeks flamed. "I'm not begging you to marry me, Monty. I'm not that cheap in the market."

"You want our engagement broken?"

"That's up to you. Absolutely. If you think, now I've told you, that you're so much better and purer than I am because I've done what I did——"

"What d'you mean, better and purer?"

"I suppose you've never had any affair with any girl——"

"Are you trying to pretend to believe that's the same thing?" His voice was incredulous, contemptuous.

"Why isn't it the same thing?"

Young Mr. Standish suffered a paralysis of scandalised amazement. "Because it isn't! For God's sake! You talk like one of those radical freaks that spout on soapboxes."

"I'm not so sure they aren't right about this man-and-woman thing," declared Pat recklessly. In so speaking she felt that she had broken with conventionalities far more than in anything, however bold, previously enunciated in their talk.

Monty's square jaw became ugly. "I'm giving you your chance. You won't tell me the man's name?"

Pat preserved the silence of obstinacy. It was more convincing than any negative. Also more exasperating.

"Good-night!" bellowed her lover, and strode from the room.

Almost immediately he was back, endued with a sad and noble expression. "Nobody shall ever know about this from me, Pat. You're safe."

For three nights Pat washed her troubled soul with tears. Her family knew that there had been a lovers' quarrel; that was all. Pat waited for Monty to break the engagement formally or send her word that he wished her to break it. Through all her grief of bereavement which, she repeatedly told herself, was the most sorrowful depth that her life had yet touched, that any life could touch, she impatiently awaited the definite solution. Relief from the strain of uncertainty; that was what she craved.

On the fourth evening Monty reappeared. All his nobleness was gone. He was haggard, nerve-racked, forlorn. He threw himself upon her compassion. He implored her. He would forgive everything; he would forget everything; he would make no conditions, if only she would take him back. Life without her——

"All right, Monty-boy," said Pat, really affected by his suffering. "I haven't changed. I love you, Monty. But if ever you let what I've told you make any difference, if ever you speak of it or let me know that you even think of it, I'm through. That minute and forever."

Humbly, abjectly, the upholder of man's superior privilege accepted the absurd condition. The stronger nature had completely dominated the weaker.

Back in his arms again, Pat savoured the delicious warmth of a passion the more ardent for the threat of frustration; the triumph of a crisis valorously met and successfully passed. But an encroaching thought tainted the rapture of the moment. What was it that he himself had so confidently said to Selden Thorpe? Was her splendid and beautiful young lover, holding the views which he had proclaimed and surrendering them so readily, indeed "a poor sort of fish"?