said. "If you will not find some means of breaking off
your engagement with Sara, then I shall tell her the whole story--tell
her what manner of man it is she proposes to make her husband!"

There was a supreme challenge in her tones, and she waited for his
answer defiantly--her head flung back, her whole body braced, as it
were, to resistance.

In the silence that followed, Trent drew away from her--slowly,
repugnantly, as though from something monstrous and unclean.

"You wouldn't--you _couldn't_ do such a thing!" he exclaimed in low,
appalled tones of unbelief.

"I could!" she asserted, though her face whitened and her eyes flinched
beneath his contemptuous gaze.

"But it would be a vile thing to do," he pursued, still with that accent
of incredulous abhorrence. "Doubly vile for _you_ to do this thing."

"Do you think I don't know that--don't realize it?" she answered
desperately. "You can say nothing that could make me think it worse than
I do already. It would be the basest action of which any woman could
be guilty. I recognize that. And yet"--she thrust her face, pinched
and strained-looking, into his--"_and yet I shall do it_. I'd take that
sin--or any other--on my conscience for the sake of Tim."

Trent turned away from her with a gesture of defeat, and for a moment or
two he paced silently backwards and forwards, while she watched him with
burning eyes.

"Do you realize what it means?" she went on urgently. "You have no way
out. You can't deny the truth of what I have to tell."

"No," he acknowledged harshly. "As you say, I cannot deny it. No one
knows that better than yourself."

Suddenly he turned to her, and his face was that of a man in uttermost
anguish of soul. Beads of moisture rimmed his drawn mouth, and when he
spoke his voice was husky and uneven.

"Haven't I suffered enough--paid enough?" he burst out passionately.
"You've had your pound of flesh. For God's sake, be satisfied with that!
Leave--Garth Trent--to build up what is left of his life in peace!"

The roughened, tortured tones seemed to unnerve her. For a moment she
hid her face in her hands, shuddering, and when she raised it again the
tears were running down her cheeks.

"I can't--I can't!" she whispered brokenly. "I wish I could . . . you
were good to me once. Oh! Maurice, I'm not a bad woman, not a wicked
woman . . . but I've my son to think of . . . his happiness." She
paused, mastering, with an effort, the emotion that thr