. Down went the humbled head, and the girl wept as if her heart would
break.

Gaston was playing with her. She had not been keen enough to understand,
but all along he had amused himself at her expense. Having had her
thrust upon him by circumstances, he had accepted the situation in his
good-natured way, but underneath it was as cruel as--all else in her
life.

She had been an ignorant, blind fool. Never had Gaston been so daring
with her. Other pretty gifts had found a place, and supplied a want, in
their common life; but this--this--oh! the incongruity was cruel
and--insulting.

Joyce could not analyze all this--she merely felt it. But when it had
sunk to the depths of her aroused instinct, the reaction took place. Had
the girl been ugly physically, or had Gaston debased her, her doom would
have been fixed; but there was a--chance!

In the death throes of her false position, she retraced the steps of her
life with Gaston. With a sickening shudder she recalled her mad fear
that first awful night when he had shut the door upon Jude and the
others. How he had made her feel, and at once, that from the high place
that was his, he could afford to help her, and only the low and vile
would misunderstand. It was because she was low and vile as Jude had
made her that she had feared--what?

How the knowledge had stung, then stunned her! She might have known, had
she remembered, from the first Gaston had always driven her back upon
herself when her foolish passion for him reared its head.

No one of his own kind would ever have been led into a misunderstanding
of his motives and goodness.

Then in the days that followed that first terrible night, she had abased
herself and striven to fill the role Gaston prepared for her!

Later she studied and silently prayed that, in a small way, she might
repay him for his divine kindness!

But with the patient effort and the marvellous results of quickened
mentality, a clear space was left in the new woman for harrowing doubt.
She never again sank to the thought that Gaston could love her; but she
could not utterly blind herself to the fear that he might be hurting
himself through others _not_ realizing the difference between him and
her. Naturally she could not go to Gaston with this doubt--it would seem
an insult to him, and a shameless suggestion.

Therefore she hailed Drew's advent with mingled apprehension and relief.
Had he taken for granted that all was well; had he seemed