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to destroy his whole spirit. Anyway, she certainly couldn’t !”
    “Was that all?” asked Kathryn, her face white.
    “It was—if only because of the restraint of everyone present in not asking her who the girl was. But if anyone had, I can’t decide whether she would actually have mentioned your name—risked slander, in fact. Steven did ask you to marry him before he left England, didn’t he, Kathryn?”
    “Yes—and I refused him because I didn’t love him and hadn’t entertained for a moment any idea of marrying him. But Steven accepted that, and he didn’t blame me. We parted friends, and at the time Thelma knew that.”
    “Then why should she have concocted this fantasy since?” puzzled Barbara. “Could it be that she wanted you two to marry so much that her disappointment for Steven had to find a scapegoat in you?”
    Kathryn shook her head. “Thelma never wanted Steven to marry me,” she said slowly.
    “But ? ”
    “She’s younger than he is—Steven is thirty-five — but I think she must always have dominated him as she does still. I sensed from the beginning that she would resent his marrying me—or even anyone to whom he might transfer his loyalties. I hate saying this about her, but I think if I’d ever considered marrying Steven, Thelma in the background would have made things too difficult.”
    “You would have been marrying Steven, not Thelma,” Barbara reminded her gently. “No one in love should allow in-laws to matter so much.”
    Kathryn sighed. “If I had loved Steven, that would have been different, I daresay. But I didn’t, and I’ve always been content to leave him to Thelma’s influence. Going out to Africa with Steven wouldn’t have solved matters either, for she has always planned to go out there too, I understand.”
    “Then the sooner she goes, the better—or learns to hold her tongue,” declared Barbara, with unwonted asperity. “After what you’ve told me, the things she implied yesterday were a sheer, wanton destruction of your character — ”
    “She ‘named no names’, remember,” put in Kathryn a little bitterly.
    “But that may have been only because we didn’t question her. It could be that, given the right confidential atmosphere and a really sympathetic ear, she wouldn’t have any scruples, though of course nobody who really knew you would listen — ”
    “No one who knew you would listen.” But Adam Brand must have listened to Thelma’s version of the break with Steven, for there could be no other explanation of his distorted judgment of her action. Adam Brand had based his first impressions of her, a stranger, upon the trust he put in Thelma Carter’s word! That meant that he must know her very well indeed, and at least as well as he knew Steven. Even better, probably. For though Steven would surely have told the truth, only a closeness with Thelma that went far deeper than friendship could have persuaded Adam Brand to accept and voice her judgment as unquestioningly as if it were his own.
    Strangely, Kathryn found that she cared that it should be so, even more than she minded that Thelma was setting no check to her tongue elsewhere. More than anything it mattered that Adam Brand should come to judge her fairly. More than anything it mattered that he, of all people, should know her for what she really was, and her thoughts began to grope for ways in which that might be achieved.
    She supposed that she could face Thelma in his presence, demanding that the other girl should repeat her malice. But how undignified that would be! She could write to Steven, asking him to see that Adam Brand learned the truth. But how to explain to Steven why she cared that he should? At every turn of her thoughts pride stepped in, telling her mockingly that for pride’s sake she would do nothing—nothing at all.
    She shivered suddenly and Barbara exclaimed: “You’re cold, dear! I should have lit the fire — ”
    “I’m not cold,” Kathryn assured her