she saw
James stand over his victim and fire shot after shot into the hideous,
writhing heap.

But the limit was reached. With one wild scream she turned away and
flung herself upon her bed; and the next moment everything mercifully
became a blank to her.

That was on the Sunday morning. She saw nothing of what followed. She
knew nothing until she awoke some two hours later to the haunting
vision of the scene she had witnessed. And ever since it had clung to
her--clung like an obsession, a mental parasite sapping her nerve, her
very reason. Nor had she power to disassociate herself from it.

And now she was waiting in an agony of mind for the murderer's
return. Not only was she waiting for his return, but she expected to
see him bearing in his arms one of her own innocent children. The
thought of little Vada in his arms drove her frantic. Her innocent
little Vada in the arms of this cold-blooded assassin!

She knew him now for all he was. The scales had fallen from her
foolish eyes. All the romance of his hideous calling had passed in a
flash, and she saw it as it was. She had no words to express her
feelings of horror and revolting. In her weakness and wickedness she
had torn herself out of the life of a good man to fling herself upon
the bosom of this black-hearted villain. She loathed him; she loathed
his very name. But more than all else she loathed herself. Her
punishment was terrible. She was so helpless, so powerless. She knew
it, and the knowledge paralyzed her thought. What could she do? She
knew she was watched, and any move to get away would be at once
frustrated. She could do nothing--nothing.

No longer able to remain in her room, she had come out to breathe air
which she vainly hoped was less contaminated with the crimes of the
man whose home she had elected to share. But inside or out it made no
difference. The haunting was not of the place. It was in her mind; it
had enveloped her whole consciousness.

But through it all there was one longing, one yearning for all that
she had lost, all she had wantonly thrown away. Suffering Creek, with
its poverty-stricken home on the dumps, suggested paradise to her now.
She yearned as only a mother can yearn for the warm caresses of her
children. She longed for the honest love of the little man whom, in
the days of her arrogant womanhood, she had so mercilessly despised.
All his patient kindliness came back to her now. All his tremendous,
if misdirected, eff