be against it. In
any case, Gloria ran the risk of being left alone, ruined and
unprotected.

But the present problem was a meaner one, though not less desperate in
its way. He reproached himself with having wasted even an hour when the
case was so urgent. Without longer hesitation, he began to write letters
to the editors for whom he worked, requesting them as a favour to
advance the next remittance. Even then, he could scarcely expect to have
money in less than ten days, and there was no one to whom he would
willingly turn for help. Under ordinary circumstances he would have gone
without food for days rather than have borrowed of an acquaintance, but
he realized that he must overcome any such false pride within a day or
two, at the risk of making Gloria suffer.

In those first hours he was not conscious of any question of right or
wrong in what had taken place. Honour, in a rather worldly sense, had
always supplied for him the place of all other moral considerations. The
woman he loved had been ill-treated by her husband, and had come to him
for protection. He had done his best, in spite of his love, to make her
go back, and she had known how to refuse. Men, as men, would not blame
him for what he was doing. Gloria, as a woman, could never reproach him
with having tempted her. He might suffer for his deeds, but he could
never blush for them.

CHAPTER XXXII.

MEANWHILE, Gloria had gone out alone, intending to find her husband and
to tell him that the die was cast, that she had left him in haste and
anger, but that she never would return to his house. She felt that she
must live through the chain of emotions to the very last link, as it
were, until she could feel no more. It was like her to go straight to
Reanda and take up the battle where she had interrupted it. Her anger
had been sudden, but it was not brief. She had left weakness, and had
found strength to add to her own, and she wished the man who had hurt
her to feel how strong she was, and how she was able to take her life
out of his hands and to keep it for herself, and live it as she pleased
in spite of him and every one. The wild blood that ran in her veins was
free, now, and she meant that no one but herself should ever again have
the right to thwart it, to tell her heart that it should beat so many
times in each minute and no more. She was perfectly well aware that she
was accepting social ruin with her freedom, but she had long nourished a
ranc