nths of like excesses. The mood in which she had sent
the man Green from her room was the last despairing flicker of her
better instincts. Moved by her memories of better things,--of a better
love and dreams and ideals,--she had spent a little hour or two in
sentimental regret for that which she had so recklessly cast aside. And
then, because there was within her no foundation of abiding principle
for her sentiment, she had again put on the character which had so
separated her from the life of the man to whom she was married, indeed,
but with whom she was never one. With the burning consciousness of what
she might have been and of what she was ever tormenting her, she sank,
as the hours passed, deeper and deeper into the quicksands of physical
indulgence until, in her mad determination to destroy utterly her
ability to feel remorse, she lost all mental control of herself, and
responded to every insane whim of her drink-disordered brain.

As she stood there, now, in the doorway of that little log house by the
river,--face to face with the man and the woman who, though they
were united in their love, were yet separated by the very fact of her
existence,--she was, in all her hideous, but pitiful, repulsiveness, the
legitimate creation of those life-forces which she so fitly personified.

Betty Jo instinctively drew closer to Brian's side.

"Hello, Brian, dear!" said the woman, with a drunken leer. "Thought I'd
call to see you in your charming love-nest that Harry Green raved so
about. Can't you introduce me to your little sweetheart?"

"No?" she continued, and laughed again. Then coming an unsteady step
toward them, she added, thickly: "Very well, Brian, old sport; you
won't introduce me,--I'll have to introduce myself." She grinned with
malicious triumph at Betty Jo: "Don't be frightened, my dear. It's all
right. I'm nobody of importance,--just his wife,--that's all,--just his
wife."

Betty Jo, with a little cry, turned to the man who stood as if stricken
dumb with horror. "Brian?" she said. "Oh, Brian?"

It was the first time she had ever addressed him by his given name, and
Brian Kent, as he looked, saw in those gray eyes no hint of doubt or
censure, but only the truest love and sympathy. Betty Jo had not failed
in the moment of her supreme testing.

"It's true, all right, isn't it, Brian?" said Martha Kent. "I'm his wife
fast enough, my dear. But you don't need to worry,--you two. I'm a good
sport,--I am. I've h