hat Ransom had just realized from hers, stepped to the door and
closed it. "The time is short; I have much, very much to do. For my sake,
for the sake of this much-abused man, whom you allowed to marry you,
speak out, tell the truth at once. You are Georgian."

"Yes," fell in almost an inaudible whisper from her lips. "I am
Georgian." Then as he loosed his grasp from her arm and she was left
standing there alone, some instinct of isolation, some realization of the
mysterious pit she had dug for herself and possibly for others, in this
avowal of her identity, wrought her brain into momentary madness, and
flinging up her arms she fell on her knees before Hazen as under the
stroke of some unseen thunderbolt.

"You made me say it," she cried. "On your head be the punishment, not on
mine nor on his." Then as Hazen drew slowly back, touched in his turn by
some emotion to which neither his look nor gesture gave any clew, she
rose to her feet, and fixing him with a look of strange defiance, added
in milder but no less determined tones: "A tongue unloosed talks long and
loud. You have made me give up my secret, but I shall not stop at that. I
shall say more; tell all my dreadful history; yours--mine. I will not be
thought wicked because I undertook so great a deception. I will not have
this good man's opinion of me shaken; not for a minute; what I did, I
did for him and he shall know it whatever penalty it may incur. He is
my husband--his love to me is priceless, and I will hold it against
you--against the Cause--against Heaven--yes, and against Hell."

Here was truth. To Ransom it came like balm and a renewed life. Bounding
across the room, he strove to seize her hand and draw her to himself.
But Hazen would not have it. His anger, indeterminate before, was
concentrated now, and not the white pleading of her face, nor the warning
gesture of Ransom, could hold it back.

"Traitress!" he cried, "traitress to me and to the Cause. You thought
to escape what is inescapable. Do you know what you have done? You
have--" The rest hung in air. A sudden weakness had seized him and he
sank faltering back into a chair Harper pushed towards him, still
denouncing her, however, with lifted hand and accusing eyes, the
image--though no longer a speaking one--of the implacable and determined
avenger.

Georgian, shocked into silence, stared at him in a frenzy of complicated
emotions to which neither of them as yet had given the key capable of