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down very gently, watching it as if he thought it might break. Then he looked up at her. “I’m only being honest, Callie.”
    â€œThen be dishonest!” Callie cried. “Pretend you love me! Pretend we have a good marriage! Pretend you like my family! Pretend you want a dozen kids! Pretend you’re alive, because you’re only going through the motions of living now?” Then she added in a small, dismal voice, “Like me.”
    Reese said tonelessly, “That wouldn’t work, Callie, and you’re smart enough to know it.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t work?” Callie asked fiercely. “It’s the only thing that will work! You’re my man, you’re married to me and you’ll stay married to me. Make the best of it, Reese. If you’ll try, I’ll try.”
    Reese straightened up and said quietly, “It’s no use, Callie. Let’s have supper.”
    â€œYour supper’s in the oven. I don’t want any.” Callie moved swiftly into the living room and Reese heard the sound of her heel taps crossing it, followed by the sound of the door to the bedroom shutting.
    Now he drained off his drink and poured himself another, wondering what had brought this to a head tonight. He suspected that it was because he and Jen had kept the secret of a witness whose testimony should have hanged Orville Hoad. Had he ever told Callie that he loved Jen Truro? He didn’t have to, he supposed wryly. At one time the whole town, the whole county knew it, so why shouldn’t Callie have known it?
    Jen had known twice and she knew it now, just as she knew the unlovely history of his marriage to Callie Hoad. That marriage had happened two years ago when, like a fool, he had chosen the path of honor that had led to this misery. He could not remember when he had first loved Jen. Perhaps it was when she came back from college to read law in her father’s office, determined to become a lawyer. At least that was when he proposed to her the first time. Jen had put him off, saying that while she loved him, she first wanted to study under her father and be admitted to the Bar. He had agreed to wait, watching with both amazement and amusement while she fought and clawed for her right to take the Bar examination, which she passed so brilliantly that she could not be denied admittance to the Bar and the right to practice as the first woman lawyer in the State’s history.
    Looking back at it, he supposed the turning point was the paralytic stroke suffered by Sebastian Truro, Jen’s father. Her mother was long dead and there was no one to take care of him and his law practice except Jen. When he proposed for the second time, even the tenth time, he received the same answer—her father needed her and she had no right to carry the burden of an invalid father into their marriage.
    It was after this tenth refusal that Reese, in rage and frustration, had made up his mind to forget her. He had met Callie Hoad at a Fourth of July dance and thought her refreshingly unlike the other Hoads. She and her father were newly come to the country to join the clan of the less prosperous Hoads. He began half-heartedly courting Callie, more to spite Jen than because of his love for Callie. It was just as Callie said, she loved him and, inevitably, too well. When she became pregnant by him, he had offered marriage and she had accepted. Four months later she miscarried their child.
    This, Reese supposed, was the history of half the marriages in the Christian world; it could almost be called the human condition. Women married men they didn’t really love in order to protect their good names, and men married women they were only momentarily fond of in order to save them from disgrace. They accepted what fate or nature handed them—a partner for life, children to raise and a companionship of sorts, tempered by quarrels, reconciliations and monotony.
    This acceptance, of course, was