She broke down and buried her face in her hands, permitting his hand to rest tenderly on her shoulder.

“You see it is not easy for me,” she went on. “There is so much involved, so much that I cannot understand. You say you are all at sea. Then think of me all at sea and worse confounded. You — oh, why talk about it — you are a man with a man’s experiences, with a man’s nature. It is all very simple to you. ‘She loves me, she loves me not.’ But I am tangled, confused. I — and I wasn’t born yesterday — have had no experience in loving variously. I have never had affairs. I loved only one man� and now you. You, and this love for you, have broken into a perfect marriage, Evan — ”

“I know — ” he said.