ail through the blank that surrounded him?

When he had entered his home the night before, God knew he had been
sorely distressed. He was going back to the woman he loved with her
fetters still unloosened. Worn and spent, he had permitted himself the
relaxation of spending a few days with her before he started out again
on the quest of Jude. He had found the shack deserted, but every pitiful
evidence of Joyce's thought for his comfort was apparent. He had lighted
the fire and lamp; had searched for note or other explanation, and,
finding none, he had eaten hastily and gone to Filmer's house. There
desolation again greeted him.

Finally he had concluded that Joyce had gone to Isa Tate. This was a
poor solace, but it stayed him through the long night; an early visit to
the Black Cat proved this last hope vain.

Now, with the later knowledge searching into his soul, Dale noticed the
careful arrangements Joyce had made, before she slipped back into the
hell from which he had once rescued her.

She had taken only her own poor belongings. The shabby gowns and
trinkets that had been found among the ruins of the home Jude had laid
low.

One silent token of the flight brought the stinging tears to Dale's
eyes.

At the last, there must have been haste, for near the door of Joyce's
bedroom lay the mate of the baby's sock that Isa Tate was hiding at that
very moment.

Poor, dead baby! He was pleading for the pretty mother who in his brief
life had so tenderly pleaded for him.

Isa had wept over the tiny shoe, and now John Dale picked the mate up
reverently, and put it back where he knew Joyce always had kept it.

Manlike he did not give himself blindly up to his misery. Life must go
on somehow--and while he sought a way out of the blackness that
enshrouded him, he must prepare himself.

He replenished the fire, and then when high noon flooded the living room
with a pale glow, he set forth a meagre but nourishing meal.

In the performing of these homely tasks he found a kind of comfort. It
brought Joyce back to him in a sense.

During the early afternoon hours he smoked and thought. Things became
clearer, more fixed in his mind.

Of course Joyce had been driven to Jude by a mistaken idea that she was
proving her deep love. Almost from the first, Dale thought of Ruth Dale
detached from the shock of her mere name as it had struck his brain and
heart in Drew's study. The old, vital charm of Ruth's personality; her
swee