ith her guilty
partner, had made him know her at last for a sinful woman. The shackles
had burst from his heart and he was free from her allurements for
evermore! He understood now why she had bade him choose between herself
and Christ. She had no part nor lot in things pure and holy. She hated
holiness because she herself was sinful!

It was midnight before Gila and Tennelly came forth, Tennelly grave and
sad, Gila tear-stained and subdued.

Courtland was sitting in the big chair before the fireplace, though the
fire was smoldering low, and the elevator-boy had long ago retired to
slumbers on a bench in a hidden alcove.

Tennelly came straight to Courtland, as though he had known he would be
waiting there for him. "I am going to take Gila down to Beechwood. You
will come with us?" There was entreaty in the tone, though it was very
quiet.

"Shall I take my car?"

"No. You will ride with me on the front seat. Is there a maid here that
I can hire to go with us? We can bring her back in the morning."

"I'll find out."

That was a silent ride through the late moonlight. The men spoke only
when it was necessary to keep the right road. Gila, huddled sullenly in
the back seat beside a dozing, gray-haired chambermaid, spoke not at
all. And who shall say what were her thoughts as hour after hour she sat
in her humiliation and watched the two men whom she had wronged so
deeply? Perhaps her spirit seethed the more violently within her silent,
angry body because she was not yet sure of Tennelly. Her tears and
explanations, her pleading little story of deceit and innocence, had not
wrought the charm upon him that they might had not Aquilar been known to
him for the past two weeks, a stranger who had been hanging about Gila,
and who had been encouraged against her lover's oft-repeated warnings. A
certain mysterious story of an unfaithful wife put an air of romance
about him that Tennelly had not liked. Gila had never seen him so
serious and hard to coax as he had been to-night. He had spoken to her
as if she were a naughty child; had commanded her to go at once to her
aunt in Beechwood and remain there the allotted time. She simply _had_
to obey or lose him. There were things about Tennelly's fortune and
prospects that made him most desirable as a husband. Moreover, she felt
that through marrying Tennelly she could the better hurt Courtland, the
man whom she now hated with all her heart.

They reached Beechwood at not too u