ends I couldn't think of any to turn to except those at home.
The other mistake I made was not to write them at home and tell them the
truth and then wait for them to send me money to come. But I guess my
mind stopped working when the shock came."

Aurora appeared to brace herself, while decently considering how to
minimize to her audience the brutality of her next revelation.

"Jim cleared out one night while I was asleep, taking every cent we'd
got and every last thing he could hope to turn into a cent," she said,
hardening her voice and lips. Gerald was given a moment in which to
visualize the situation, before she went on: "I guess, as I said before,
that I wasn't in my right mind for a spell; all I could think of was
getting home to my own folks, and I was going to do it somehow, though I
hadn't a cent. I hadn't even my wedding-ring. I'd put it off because my
finger had grown fatter, and he'd taken even that to go and try his luck
somewhere else.--What do you think of it?" she mechanically added.

She was pale, remembering these things. Gerald drew in a long, unsteady
breath, oppressed.

"I was going to get home somehow," Aurora repeated, "and I wasn't going
to waste time waiting for anything. And how was I going to do it? I
don't suppose I really thought; I followed instinct like an animal. I
hid in a freight-car going East--"

A definite difficulty here stopped Aurora. While she felt for words in
which to clothe what followed, the images in her mind made her eyes,
which were not seeing the things actually before them, more descriptive
of the anguish of remembered scenes than her words were likely to be.

"I'm going to skip all that, Gerald." With a gesture, she suddenly
rolled up a part of her story and threw it aside. "But when I came to
see and understand rightly again, weeks after, in a hospital at Denver,
I cried, oh! how I cried, and didn't care what became of me. Because I'd
lost him; they hadn't succeeded in saving him. He had lived, mind you,"
she emphasized with pride--"he had lived a little while, he was all
right, perfect in every way--a son."

His due of tears was not withheld from the wee frustrated god. Aurora
gave up talking, so as to have her cry in quietness.

Gerald, holding back a sound of distress, twisted on his chair, not
daring to recall himself to Aurora's notice either by speaking or
touching her.

"I'm plain sorry for myself," she explained her tears while trying to
stop them.