She knew she had gone back to the
fatal obsession, which, aided by the Padre and her lover, she had so
loyally contended. She knew in those dark moments she was weakly
yielding. These men had come into her life, had sown fresh seeds of
promise, but they had been sown in soil choked with weeds of
superstition, and so had remained wholly unfruitful.

How could it be otherwise? Hard upon the heels of Buck's love had come
this deadly attack of fate upon him and his. The miracle of it was
stupendous. It had come in a way that was utterly staggering. It had
come, not as with those others who had gone before, but out of her
life. It had come direct from her and hers. And the disaster
threatened was not merely death but disgrace, disgrace upon a good
man, even upon her lover, which would last as long as they two had
life.

The sense of tragedy merged into the maddening thought of the
injustice of it. It was monstrous. It was a tyranny for which there
was no justification, and it goaded her to the verge of hysteria.
Whatever she did now the hand of fate would move on irrevocably
fulfilling its purpose to the bitter end. She knew it. In spite of all
Buck's confidence, all his efforts to save his friend, the disaster
would be accomplished, and her lover would be lost to her in the
vortex of her evil destiny.

Fool--fool that she had been. Wicked even, yes, wicked, that she had
not foreseen whither her new life was drifting. It was for her to have
anticipated the shoals of trouble in the tide of Buck's strong young
life. It was for her to have prevented the mingling of their lives. It
was for her to have shut him out of her thoughts and denied him access
to the heart that beat so warmly for him. She had been weak, so weak.
On every count she had failed to prove the strength she had believed
herself to possess. It was a heart-breaking thought.

But she loved. It would have been impossible to have denied her love.
She would not have denied it if she could. Her rebellion against her
fate now carried her further. She had the right to love this man. She
had the right which belongs to every woman in the world. And he
desired her love. He desired it above all things in the world--and he
had no fear.

Then the strangeness of it. With all that had gone before she had had
no misgivings until the moment he had poured out all the strength of
his great love into her yearning ears. She had not recognized the
danger besetting them. She ha