As their eyes met, she realized for the first time that she was talking to Ralph Denham, and she remembered, without recalling any details, that she had been speaking of him quite lately, and that she had reason to think ill of him.

What Mary had said she could not remember, but she felt that there was a mass of knowledge in her mind which she had not had time to examine--knowledge now lying on the far side of a gulf.

But her agitation flashed the queerest lights upon her past.

She must get through the matter in hand, and then think it out in quiet.

She bent her mind to follow what Ralph was saying.