He laughed a fiendish laugh. Her resistance fired him. He caught her fiercely to him. He covered her face, her throat, her arms, her hands, with kisses that burned her through and through, seeming to sear her very soul.

He crushed her in a grip that bruised her, that suffocated her. He pressed his lips, hot with pa.s.sion, to hers.

"And now!" he said. "And now!"

She lay in his arms spent and quivering and helpless. The cruel triumph of his voice silenced all appeal.

He went on deeply, speaking with his lips so close that she felt his breath scorch through her like the breath of a fiery furnace.

"You are bound to me for better--for worse, and nothing will ever set you free. Do you understand? If you will not be my wife, you shall be--my slave."

Quiveringly, through lips that would scarcely move she spoke at last. "I shall never forgive you."

"I shall never ask your forgiveness," he said.

So the gates of h.e.l.l closed upon Avery also. She went down into the unknown depths. And in an agony of shame she learned the bitterest lesson of her life.

CHAPTER VIII

A FRIEND IN NEED

"Why, Avery dear, is it you? Come in!" Mrs. Lorimer looked up with a smile of eager welcome on her little pinched face and went forward almost at a run to greet her.

The brown holland smock upon which she had been at work fell to the ground. It was Avery who, after a close embrace, stooped to pick it up.

"Who is this for? Baby Phil? You must let me lend a hand," she said.

"Ah, my dear, I do miss you," said Mrs. Lorimer wistfully. "The village girl who comes in to help is no good at all at needlework, and you know how busy Nurse always is. Jeanie does her best, and is a great help in many ways. But she is but a child. However," she caught herself up, "I mustn't start grumbling the moment you enter the house. Tell me about yourself, dear! You are looking very pale. Does the heat try you?"

"A little," Avery admitted.

She was spreading out the small garment on her knee, looking at it critically, with eyes downcast. She certainly was pale that morning. The only colour in her face seemed concentrated in her lips.

Mrs. Lorimer looked at her uneasily. There was something not quite normal about her, she felt. She had never seen Avery look so statuesque. She missed the quick sweetness of her smile, the brightness and animation of her glance.

"It is very dear of you to come and see me," she said gently, after a moment. "Did you walk all the way? I hope it hasn't been too much for you."

"No," Avery said. "It did me good."

She was on the verge of saying something further, but the words did not come.

She continued to smooth out the little smock with minute care, while Mrs.

Lorimer watched her anxiously.

"Is all well, dear?" she ventured at last.

Avery raised her brows slightly, but her eyes remained downcast. "I went to the wedding yesterday," she said, after a momentary pause.

"Oh, did you, dear? Stephen went, but I stayed at home. Did you see him?"

"Only from a distance," said Avery.

"It was a very magnificent affair, he tells me." Mrs. Lorimer was becoming a little nervous. She had begun to be conscious of something tragic in the atmosphere. "And did you enjoy it, dear? Or was the heat too great?"

"It was hot," Avery said.

Again she seemed to be about to say something more, and again she failed to do so. Her lips closed.

Mrs. Lorimer remained silent also for several seconds. Then softly she rose, went to Avery, put her arms about her.

"My darling!" she said fondly.

That was all. No further questioning, no anxious probing, simply her love poured out in fullest measure upon the altar of friendship! And it moved Avery instantly and overwhelmingly, shattering her reserve, sweeping away the stony ramparts of her pride.

She turned and hid her face upon Mrs. Lorimer's breast in an anguish of tears.

It lasted for several minutes, that paroxysm of weeping. It was the pent misery of hours finding vent at last. All she had suffered, all the humiliation, the bitterness of desecrated love, the utter despair of her soul, was in those tears. They shook her being to the depths. They seemed to tear her heart asunder.

At last in broken whispers she began to speak. Still with those scalding tears falling between her words, she imparted the whole miserable story; she bared her fallen pride. There was no other person in the world to whom she could thus have revealed that inner agony, that lacerating shame. But Mrs. Lorimer, the despised, the downtrodden, was as an angel from heaven that day. A new strength was hers, born of her friend's utter need. She held her up, she sustained, her, through that the darkest hour of her life, with a courage and a steadfastness of which no one had ever deemed her capable.

When Avery whispered at length, "I can never, never go back to him!" her answer was prompt.

"My dear, you must. It will be hard, G.o.d knows. But He will give you strength. Oh Avery, don't act for yourself, dear! Let Him show the way!"

"If He will!" sobbed Avery, with her burning face hidden against her friend's heart.

"He will, dearest, He will," Mrs. Lorimer a.s.serted with conviction. "He is much nearer to us in trouble than most of us ever realize. Only let Him take the helm; He will steer you through the storm."

"I feel too wicked," whispered Avery, "too--overwhelmed with evil."

"My dear, feelings are nothing," said the Vicar's wife, with a decision that would have shocked the Reverend Stephen unspeakably. "We can't help our feelings, but we can put ourselves in the way of receiving help. Oh, don't you think He often lets us miss our footing just because He wants us to lean on Him?"

"I don't know," Avery said hopelessly. "But I think it will kill me to go back. Even if--if I pretended to forgive him--I couldn't possibly endure to--to go on as if nothing had happened. Eric--my first husband--will always stand between us now."

"Dear, are you sure that what you heard was not an exaggeration?" Mrs.

Lorimer asked gently.

"Oh yes, I am sure." There was utter hopelessness in Avery's reply. "I have always known that there was something in his past, some cloud of which he would never speak openly. But I never dreamed--never guessed--"

She broke off with a sharp shudder. "Besides, he has offered no explanation, no excuse, no denial. He lets me believe the worst, and he doesn't care. He is utterly callous--utterly brutal. That is how I know that the worst is true." She rose abruptly, as if inaction had become torture to her. "Oh, I must leave him!" she cried out wildly. "I am nothing to him. My feelings are less than nothing. He doesn't really want me. Any woman could fill my place with him equally well!"

"Hush!" Mrs. Lorimer said. She went to Avery and held her tightly, as if she would herself do battle with the evil within. "You are not to say that, Avery. You are not to think it. It is utterly untrue. Suffering may have goaded him into brutality, but he is not wicked at heart. And, my dear, he is in your hands now--to make or to mar. He worships you blindly, and if his worship has become an unholy thing, it is because the thought of losing you has driven him nearly distracted. You can win it back--if you will."

"I don't want to win it back!" Avery said. She suffered the arms about her, but she stood rigid in their embrace, unyielding, unresponding. "His love is horrible to me! I abhor it!"

"Avery! Your husband!"