What if Bertram had found that he loved _her ?_ What if that were why his hand had lost its cunning--because, though loving her, he realized that he was bound to another, Billy herself?
This thought, too, Billy cast from her at once as again disloyal and unworthy.

But both thoughts, having once entered her brain, had made for themselves roads over which the second passing was much easier than the first--as Billy found to her sorrow.

Certainly, as the days went by, and as Bertram's face and manner became more and more a tragedy of suffering, Billy found it increasingly difficult to keep those thoughts from wearing their roads of suspicion into horrid deep ruts of certainty.
Only with William and Marie, now, could Billy escape from it all.

With William she sought new curios and catalogued the old.

With Marie she beat eggs and whipped cream in the shining kitchen, and tried to think that nothing in the world mattered except that the cake in the oven should not fall..