turn of the hemorrhage.

It did not return, but when evening came at length and with it the
blessed coolness of approaching night, Jeanie was so exhausted as to be
unable to speak above a whisper. She lay white and still, scarcely
conscious, only her difficult breathing testifying to the fluttering life
that had ebbed so low.

The nurse's face was very grave as she came on duty, but after an
interval of steady watching, during which the wind blew in with
rising freshness from the sea, she turned to Avery, saying, "I think
she will revive."

Avery nodded and slipped away.

There was not much time left. She ran all the way to the post-office and
scribbled a message there with trembling fingers.

"Jeanie wants you. Will you come? Avery."

She sent the message to Rodding Abbey. She knew they would forward it
from there.

Passing out again into the road, a sudden sense of sickness swept over
her. What had she done? What uncontrolled force would that telegram
unfetter? Would he come to her like a whirlwind and sweep her back into
his own tempestuous life? Would he break her will once more to his? Would
he drag her once more through the hell of his passion, kindle afresh for
her the flame that had consumed her happiness?

She dared not face the possibility. She felt as if an iron hand had
closed upon her, drawing her surely, irresistibly, back towards those
gates of brass through which she had escaped into the desert. That fiery
torture would be infinitely harder to bear now, and she knew that the
fieriest point of it all would be the desperate, aching longing to know
again the love that had shone and burnt itself out in the blast-furnace
of his sin. He had loved her once; she was sure he had loved her. But
that love had died with his boyhood, and it could never rise again. He
had trodden it underfoot and her own throbbing heart with it. He had
destroyed that which she had always believed to be indestructible.

She never wanted to see him again. She would have given all she had to
have avoided the meeting. Her whole being recoiled from the thought of
it. And yet--and yet--she saw again the black head laid against her knee,
and heard the low, half-rueful words: "Oh, my dear, there is no other
woman but you in all the world!"

The vision went with her all through the night. She could not escape it.

In the morning she rose with a sense of being haunted, and a terrible
weariness that hung upon her like a chain.

Th