In the solitude of her room she took the resolve. Her troubles were
multiplying; she, too, was in the current, the end of which was a
pit--a pit black and without bottom. Once already its grip had seized
her, once already she had yielded to the insidious drift. Now suddenly
aware of a danger, she fought back, and her hands beating the air for
help, turned towards the greatest strength she knew.

"I want my husband," she cried, aloud, to the empty darkness of the
night. "I want my husband. I will have him; he is mine, he is mine.
There shall nothing take me from him; there shall nothing take him from
me."

Her first opportunity came upon a Sunday soon afterward. Jadwin,
wakeful all the Saturday night, slept a little in the forenoon, and
after dinner Laura came to him in his smoking-room, as he lay on the
leather lounge trying to read. His wife seated herself at a
writing-table in a corner of the room, and by and by began turning the
slips of a calendar that stood at her elbow. At last she tore off one
of the slips and held it up.

"Curtis."

"Well, old girl?"

"Do you see that date?"

He looked over to her.

"Do you see that date? Do you know of anything that makes that day
different--a little--from other days? It's June thirteenth. Do you
remember what June thirteenth is?"

Puzzled, he shook his head.

"No--no."

Laura took up a pen and wrote a few words in the space above the
printed figures reserved for memoranda. Then she handed the slip to her
husband, who read aloud what she had written.

"'Laura Jadwin's birthday.' Why, upon my word," he declared, sitting
upright. "So it is, so it is. June thirteenth, of course. And I was
beast enough not to realise it. Honey, I can't remember anything these
days, it seems."

"But you are going to remember this time?" she said. "You are not going
to forget it now. That evening is going to mark the beginning of--oh,
Curtis, it is going to be a new beginning of everything. You'll see.
I'm going to manage it. I don't know how, but you are going to love me
so that nothing, no business, no money, no wheat will ever keep you
from me. I will make you. And that evening, that evening of June
thirteenth is mine. The day your business can have you, but from six
o'clock on you are mine." She crossed the room quickly and took both
his hands in hers and knelt beside him. "It is mine," she said, "if you
love me. Do you understand, dear? You will come home at six o'clock,
and