ng to those that were storing up in
his mind against himself. The sense of rightness that would have made
him gentle, had been carried away by the passion he'd shared with her,
and he couldn't get it back.

He didn't look at her as he talked, and she didn't interrupt; said no
word of denial or defense. The big outburst spent itself. He lapsed into
an uneasy silence, got himself together again, and went on trying to
restate his grievance--this time more reasonably, retracting a little.
But under her continued silence, he grew weakly irritated again.

When at last she spoke, he turned his eyes toward her and saw a sort of
frozen look in her dull white face that he had never seen in it before.
Her intonation was monotonous, her voice scarcely audible.

"I guess I understand," she said. "I don't know whether I wish I was
dead or not. If I'd died when the babies were born ... But I'm glad I
came away when I did. And I'm glad,"--she gave a faint shudder there at
the alternative--"I'm glad I've got a job and that I can pay back that
hundred dollars I owe you. I've had it quite a while. But I've kept it,
hoping you might find out where I was and come to me, as you did, and
that we might have a chance to talk. I thought I'd tell you how I'd
earned it, and that you'd be a little--proud with me about it, proud
that I could pay it back so soon."

She smiled a little over that, a smile he had to turn away from. But
this tortured smile shriveled in the flame of passion with which she
went on. "If I couldn't pay it back to-night, after this, I'd feel like
killing myself, or like--going out and earning it in the streets.
Because that's what you've made me to-night!"

He cried out her name at that, but she went on as if she hadn't heard;
only calm again--or so one might have thought from the sound of her
voice.

"I went away, you see, because I couldn't bear to have the love part of
your life without a sort of friendly partnership in the rest of it. But
I didn't know then that you could love me while you hated me, while you
felt that I'd unspeakably degraded myself and disgraced you. So that
while you loved me and had me in your arms, you felt degraded for doing
it. I didn't know that till now.

"I suppose I'll be glad some day that it all happened; that I met you
and loved you and had the babies, even though it's all had to end," she
shuddered again, "like this."

It wasn't till he tried to speak that her apparent calm was bro