hite
nightgown clinging to her slender figure and the long braid down her
back made her look as young as her soul--the soul that gazed from her
fixed, fascinated eyes, the soul of a girl of eighteen, full as much
child as woman still. She sat down before him in a low chair, her
elbows on her knees, her chin supported by her hands, her eyes never
leaving his swollen, dark red, brutish face--a cigar stump, much
chewed, lay upon his cheek near his open mouth. He was as absurd and
as repulsive as a gorged pig asleep in a wallow.

The dawn burst into broad day, but she sat on motionless until the
clock struck the half-hour after six. Then she returned to the bedroom
and locked herself in again.

Toward noon she dressed and went into the sitting-room. He was gone
and it had been put to rights. When he came, at twenty minutes to one,
she was standing at the window, but she did not turn.

"Did you get my note?" he asked, in a carefully careless tone. He went
on to answer himself: "No, there it is on the floor just where I put
it, under the bedroom door. No matter--it was only to say I had to go
out but would be back to lunch. Sorry I was kept so late last night.
Glad you didn't wait up for me--but you might have left the bedroom
door open--it'd have been perfectly safe." He laughed good-naturedly.
"As it was, I was so kind-hearted that I didn't disturb you, but slept
on the sofa."

As he advanced toward her with the obvious intention of kissing her,
she slowly turned and faced him. Their eyes met and he stopped
short--her look was like the eternal ice that guards the pole.

"I saw you at the theater last night," she said evenly. "And this
morning, I sat and watched you as you lay on the sofa over there."

He was taken completely off his guard. With a gasp that was a kind of
groan he dropped into a chair, the surface of his mind strewn with the
wreckage of the lying excuses he had got ready.

"Please don't try to explain," she went on in the same even tone. "I
understand now about--about Paris and--everything. I know that--father
was right."

He gave her a terrified glance--no tears, no trace of excitement, only
calmness and all the strength he knew was in her nature and, in
addition, a strength he had not dreamed was there.

"What do you intend to do?" he asked after a long silence.

She did not answer immediately. When she did, she was not looking at
him.

"When I married you--across the river from