that. I didn't cry. No, I didn't cry. But something
strange was happening to me which tears might have prevented. It seemed
to me there were many walls to my room; I was faint; the windows seemed
to appear and disappear, and in that sickness I reached my bed. Then I
saw the door open, and John Graham came in, and closed the door behind
him, and locked it. My room. He had come into _my room!_ The
unexpectedness of it--the horror--the insult roused me from my stupor. I
sprang up to face him, and there he stood, within arm's reach of me, a
look in his face which told me at last the truth which I had failed to
suspect--or fear. His arms were reaching out--

"'You are my wife,' he said.

"Oh, I knew, then. '_You are my wife_,' he repeated. I wanted to
scream, but I couldn't; and then--then--his arms reached me; I felt them
crushing around me like the coils of a great snake; the poison of his
lips was at my face--and I believed that I was lost, and that no power
could save me in this hour from the man who had come to my room--the man
who was my husband. I think it was Uncle Peter who gave me voice, who
put the right words in my brain, who made me laugh--yes, laugh, and
almost caress him with my hands. The change in me amazed him, stunned
him, and he freed me--while I told him that in these first few hours of
wifehood I wanted to be alone, and that he should come to me that
evening, and that I would be waiting for him. And I smiled at him as I
said these things, smiled while I wanted to kill him, and he went, a
great, gloating, triumphant beast, believing that the obedience of
wifehood was about to give him what he had expected to find through
dishonor--and I was left alone.

"I thought of only one thing then--escape. I saw the truth. It swept
over me, inundated me, roared in my ears. All that I had ever lived with
Uncle Peter came back to me. This was not his world; it had never
been--and it was not mine. It was, all at once, a world of monsters. I
wanted never to face it again, never to look into the eyes of those I
had known. And even as these thoughts and desires swept upon me, I was
filling a traveling bag in a fever of madness, and Uncle Peter was at my
side, urging me to hurry, telling me I had no minutes to lose, for the
man who had left me was clever and might guess the truth that lay hid
behind my smiles and cajolery.

"I stole out through the back of the house, and as I went I heard
Sharpleigh's low laughter in