The telephone rang again. Leland turned to it, letting the bell sound a third time, then picked up the handset. “Go ahead.”

“Joe?” She was whispering.

“What is it, Karen?”

“Are you all right? Can you talk to me?”

He looked at Roberts. “Sure. Where is Mrs. MacIver?”

“In bed. She went to lie down. She’s all right. Joe—”

“Just a minute.” He said to Roberts, “Karen put her to bed.”

“No, I didn’t,” she cried softly. “Not really. I suggested it because of her condition—I don’t know if she’s asleep. She is all right, Joe. I didn’t tell her. Joey, she beat my brains out. She told me things that you said to her.”

He hesitated. “Like what?”

“About you. About what’s really happened. You told her about me during the war. And that you really haven’t done the things you’ve told me. You had no reason to lie to her about that—like that. You told her the truth.”

Roberts leaned forward. “What is it, Joe?”

Leland could not speak to him. He waved Roberts away. “Karen—Karen? How did she get started on it?”

“Little things that happened at Dr. Roberts’ house. She thought that I disliked her, resented her—I don’t know. It made her angry. She said that she wouldn’t have mentioned them if she hadn’t had to come here, if she hadn’t been getting a runaround since I arrived. She’s become convinced that you aren’t on the case, that you’ve been too busy handling me. Handling,” she repeated.

“She can’t hear you,” he said.

“No, that telephone is disconnected, remember? Joe, she’s in love with you. She wants to marry you.”

“Did she say that?”

“No, but—”

“No buts. She’ll be all right just as she is and she knows it better than anybody. Dr. Roberts here assures me that it’s the way she is—”

“You don’t expect me to believe that,” she said.

“I don’t want you to worry. Do you believe that? I don’t want you thinking about it.”

“Joe, I want to help you,” Roberts said.

“Be quiet! It’s not your business!” He tried to turn away. “Karen—are you there?”

“Yes.”

“She guessed some things from what happened between Roberts and me. You can’t lie to her—I didn’t want to,” he said quietly. “We’ve been through that. It’s settled, I hope. Do you care about that? I don’t. I want to forget it. I was wrong.”

“Never as wrong as I’ve been. Why did you do it? Why did you tell me those things when they weren’t true?”

“I don’t know why. As well as I could guess, they were what you wanted to hear. You seemed to need them.”

She was quiet. “You let me do that to you?”

“It wasn’t important.”

“I thought you were just as bad. I told Jerry what you said about Scotland. I even convinced myself that I wasn’t the first to cheat. I was the only one, wasn’t I?”

“There was Anne, Karen.”