to what depths he had descended.
“Well, you needn’t cry-baby about that!” he said sharply. “You might as well understand what kind of a hole you’ve put me in!”
“I’ve put you in—!” said Arla fiercely. “I!”
“Yes, you!” said the man, now beyond all bounds of self-control. “I didn’t do it, did I? It was you who came to the Catherwood house fifteen minutes before the hour set for the wedding and got hysterics all over the place and drove me crazy so that I didn’t know what I was doing! It was you that staged a scene with Sherrill and got yourself married to me, wasn’t it? I didn’t know anything about it, did I? What could I do?”
There was an ominous silence while Arla struggled to control her voice. Presently she spoke in a tone of utter sadness as if she were removed from him by eons of time.
“Then all you told me last night was untrue!” she said. “Then you lied to me about your great love that you said you had for me!”
Suddenly the man grew red and shamed looking.
“I didn’t say it was a lie!” he said. “This has nothing to do with that!”
“No, but I did!” said Arla. “And it has everything to do with that! I went through agony and humiliation to save you from marrying a girl you did not love because I believed you still loved me, and had only fallen for her because you needed her money. I was trying to save you from yourself, to save our love that in the past has been so sweet and true. And this is what I get! You tell me I have put you in a hole! Well, I’m in the same hole! What do you think it is for me to be married to a man that talks that way? Do you think I’m enjoying a wedding trip like this?”
“Well, it was none of my doings!” said the man, shrugging his shoulders angrily. “I told you what kind of a fix I was in. I explained the whole matter to you, didn’t I?”
“Not until you had failed to get me to go out west on a vacation where I couldn’t find out about it until afterward! Not until your wedding invitations were about to come out,” said Arla steadily.
“Well, I tried to tell you before. I tried to let you know by my actions—!”
“Yes, you tried to be disagreeable to me!” said Arla. “I suppose I ought to have understood you were trying to cast me off like a worn-out garment. But I didn’t! I thought you were worried about your business. I forgave everything because—I—loved you!”
The man gave an angry exclamation.
“There you are bawling again! Oh, women! They do nothing but make trouble, and then they weep about it. A man is a fool to have anything to do with women!”
Arla lifted angry eyes.
“You would have talked that way to your paragon of a Sherrill Cameron, I suppose?” she said, dashing away her tears.
He gave her a furious look.
“Can anything be more tantalizing than a jealous woman?” he sneered. “Well, I think we’ve gone far enough. I didn’t come up here to listen to the kind of talk you’ve been giving me. I wanted to make you understand that we’re in a very critical situation and we’ve got to do something about it! We’ve simply got to avoid meeting people, at least together.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said! We can’t afford to have Sheldon get onto this. And he isn’t the only one on board that knows us. I met Bixby this morning in the smoking room. He asked after Sh—he asked after the bride, of course, and made some silly joke about having admired her first, and I had to tell him you were seasick, that you were a bad sailor and might not be able to appear at meals during the voyage. He knows Sheldon, you know, is a sort of a henchman of his, and it won’t do to have him talking. I think that’s our best bet anyhow to save complications; just you stay close in your cabin, except late at night we can slip out and take a walk on deck where the rest don’t usually come.”
A wave of indignation passed over Arla’s beautiful face.
“So that is the way you intend to treat me on my wedding trip!” she said bitterly. “Keep me shut up in my room! Your bride! Well, I’ll know