he end it will be the same."

Then without warning a wild sob sounded from the doorway and he looked
up, coming to his feet so abruptly that his overturned chair fell
backward with a crash.

"Marian!" he exclaimed, his voice ringing with shocked incredulity.
"What are you doing here--and alone?"

Mrs. Holbury stood leaning limply against the door-frame. She was in
evening dress, and a wrap, glistening with the shimmer of silver,
drooped loosely about her gleaming shoulders.

"It's over," she declared in a passionate and unprefaced outburst. "I
can't stand it! I'm done with him! I've left him!"

Stuart spread his hands in dumfounded amazement. "But why, in God's
name, did you come here? This is madness--this is inconceivable!"

She went unsteadily to the nearest chair and dropped into it. "I came to
stay--if you don't turn me out," she answered.

CHAPTER XII

Except for the low yet hysterical moaning of the woman in the chair and
the distant whistle of a Hudson River boat, there was complete silence
in the small room, while the man stood dumfounded and speechless.

Marian's evening gown was torn and one silk stocking sagged at the
ankle. Stuart Farquaharson noted these things vaguely and at last he
inquired, "How did you get here?"

Her answer came between sobs, "I walked."

"You have done an unspeakably mad thing, Marian," he said quietly. "You
can't stay here. There is no one in this house but myself; even my
servant is away to-night. Why didn't you go to 'The Crags'?"

She lifted a tear-stained face and shot her answer at him scornfully.
"'The Crags'! I had to talk to some one who was _human_. They would have
bundled me back with cynical advice--besides, they're off somewhere."

"You're in distress and God knows I sympathize with you. I shall
certainly offer no cynical advice, but I mean to call your husband on
the telephone and tell him that you're here."

He turned toward the side table and lifted the desk instrument, but with
the impetuous swiftness of a leopardess she came to her feet and sprang
upon him. For an instant he was borne back by the unexpected impact of
her body against his own and in that moment she seized the telephone
from his hand and tore loose its wires from the wall. Then she hurled it
with a crashing violence to the stone flagging of the hearth where it
lay wrecked, and stood before him a palpitating and disordered spirit of
fright and anger.

He had sought in that bri