sudden
glimmer of hope flashing in her blue eyes.

Gus stepped closer, with an ugly leer, his flat nose dilated, his sinister
bead eyes wide apart, gleaming apelike, as he laughed:

"We ain't atter money!"

The girl uttered a cry, long, tremulous, heart-rending, piteous.

A single tiger spring, and the black claws of the beast sank into the soft
white throat and she was still.

CHAPTER XII

AT THE DAWN OF DAY

It was three o'clock before Marion regained consciousness, crawled to her
mother, and crouched in dumb convulsions in her arms.

"What can we do, my darling?" the mother asked at last.

"Die--thank God, we have the strength left!"

"Yes, my love," was the faint answer.

"No one must ever know. We will hide quickly every trace of crime. They
will think we strolled to Lover's Leap and fell over the cliff, and my
name will always be sweet and clean--you understand--come, we must
hurry----"

With swift hands, her blue eyes shining with a strange light, the girl
removed the shreds of torn clothes, bathed, and put on the dress of
spotless white she wore the night Ben Cameron kissed her and called her a
heroine.

The mother cleaned and swept the room, piled the torn clothes and cord in
the fireplace and burned them, dressed herself as if for a walk, softly
closed the doors, and hurried with her daughter along the old pathway
through the moonlit woods.

At the edge of the forest she stopped and looked back tenderly at the
little home shining amid the roses, caught their faint perfume and
faltered:

"Let's go back a minute--I want to see his room, and kiss Henry's picture
again."

"No, we are going to him now--I hear him calling us in the mists above the
cliff," said the girl--"come, we must hurry. We might go mad and fail!"

Down the dim cathedral aisles of the woods, hallowed by tender memories,
through which the poet lover and father had taught them to walk with
reverent feet and without fear, they fled to the old meeting-place of
Love.

On the brink of the precipice, the mother trembled, paused, drew back, and
gasped:

"Are you not afraid, my dear?"

"No; death is sweet now," said the girl. "I fear only the pity of those we
love."

"Is there no other way? We might go among strangers," pleaded the mother.

"We could not escape ourselves! The thought of life is torture. Only those
who hate me could wish that I live. The grave will be soft and cool, the
light of day a burning shame.