Her voice grew cold with hate, the hate born of innocence long tortured.

"Then you are the one who----"

The accusation was cut short by the girl's shriek.

"I am not! I am not, I tell you."

For a moment, Mary lost her poise. Her voice rose in a flare of rage.

"You are! You are!"

The craven spirit of the girl could struggle no more. She could only sit in a huddled, shaking heap of dread. The woman before her had been disciplined by sorrow to sternest self-control. Though racked by emotions most intolerable, Mary soon mastered their expression to such an extent that when she spoke again, as if in self-communion, her words came quietly, yet with overtones of a supreme wo.

"She did it!" Then, after a little, she addressed the girl with a certain wondering before this mystery of horror. "Why did you throw the blame on me?"

The girl made several efforts before her mumbling became intelligible, and then her speech was gasping, broken with fear.

"I found out they were watching me, and I was afraid they would catch me. So, I took them and ran into the cloak-room, and put them in a locker that wasn't close to mine, and some in the pocket of a coat that was hanging there. G.o.d knows I didn't know whose it was. I just put them there--I was frightened----"

"And you let me go to prison for three years!" There was a menace in Mary's voice under which the girl cringed again.

"I was scared," she whined. "I didn't dare to tell."

"But they caught you later," Mary went on inexorably. "Why didn't you tell then?"

"I was afraid," came the answer from the shuddering girl. "I told them it was the first time I had taken anything and they let me off with a year."

Once more, the wrath of the victim flamed high.

"You!" Mary cried. "You cried and lied, and they let you off with a year. I wouldn't cry. I told the truth--and----" Her voice broke in a tearless sob. The color had gone out of her face, and she stood rigid, looking down at the girl whose crime had ruined her life with an expression of infinite loathing in her eyes. Garson rose from his chair as if to go to her, and his face pa.s.sed swiftly from compa.s.sion to ferocity as his gaze went from the woman he had saved from the river to the girl who had been the first cause of her seeking a grave in the waters. Yet, though he longed with every fiber of him to comfort the stricken woman, he did not dare intrude upon her in this time of her anguish, but quietly dropped back into his seat and sat watching with eyes now tender, now baleful, as they shifted their direction.

Aggie took advantage of the pause. Her voice was acid.

"Some people are sneaks--just sneaks!"

Somehow, the speech was welcome to the girl, gave her a touch of courage sufficient for cowardly protestations. It seemed to relieve the tension drawn by the other woman's torment. It was more like the abuse that was familiar to her. A gush of tears came.

"I'll never forgive myself, never!" she moaned.

Contempt mounted in Mary's breast.

"Oh, yes, you will," she said, malevolently. "People forgive themselves pretty easily." The contempt checked for a little the ravages of her grief. "Stop crying," she commanded harshly. "n.o.body is going to hurt you." She thrust the money again toward the girl, and crowded it into the half-reluctant, half-greedy hand.

"Take it, and get out." The contempt in her voice rang still sharper, mordant.

Even the puling creature writhed under the lash of Mary's tones. She sprang up, slinking back a step.

"I can't take it!" she cried, whimpering. But she did not drop the money.

"Take the chance while you have it," Mary counseled, still with the contempt that pierced even the hardened girl's sense of selfishness. She pointed toward the door. "Go!--before I change my mind."

The girl needed, indeed, no second bidding. With the money still clutched in her hand, she went forth swiftly, stumbling a little in her haste, fearful lest, at the last moment, the woman she had so wronged should in fact change in mood, take back the money--ay, even give her over to that terrible man with the eyes of hate, to put her to death as she deserved.

Freed from the miasma of that presence, Mary remained motionless for a long minute, then sighed from her tortured heart. She turned and went slowly to her chair at the desk, and seated herself languidly, weakened by the ordeal through which she had pa.s.sed.

"A girl I didn't know!" she said, bewilderedly; "perhaps had never spoken to--who smashed my life like that! Oh, if it wasn't so awful, it would be--funny! It would be funny!" A gust of hysterical laughter burst from her. "Why, it is funny!" she cried, wildly. "It is funny!"

"Mary!" Garson exclaimed sharply. He leaped across the room to face her.

"That's no good!" he said severely.

Aggie, too, rushed forward.

"No good at all!" she declared loudly.

The interference recalled the distressed woman to herself. She made a desperate effort for self-command. Little by little, the unmeaning look died down, and presently she sat silent and moveless, staring at the two with stormy eyes out of a wan face.

"You were right," she said at last, in a lifeless voice. "It's done, and can't be undone. I was a fool to let it affect me like that. I really thought I had lost all feeling about it, but the sight of that girl--the knowledge that she had done it--brought it all back to me. Well, you understand, don't you?"

"We understand," Garson said, grimly. But there was more than grimness, infinitely more, in the expression of his clear, glowing eyes.

Aggie thought that it was her turn to voice herself, which she did without undue restraint.

"Perhaps, we do, but I dunno! I'll tell you one thing, though. If any dame sent me up for three years and then wanted money from me, do you think she'd get it? Wake me up any time in the night and ask me. Not much--not a little bit much! I'd hang on to it like an old woman to her last tooth." And that was Aggie's final summing up of her impressions concerning the scene she had just witnessed.

CHAPTER XII. A BRIDEGROOM SPURNED.

After Aggie's vigorous comment there followed a long silence. That volatile young person, little troubled as she was by sensitiveness, guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette and the ill.u.s.trations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for the man, his reticence was really from a fear lest in speaking at all he might speak too freely, might betray the pervasive violence of his feeling. So, he sat motionless and wordless, his eyes carefully avoiding Mary in order that she might not be disturbed by the invisible vibrations thus sent from one to another. Mary herself was shaken to the depths. A great weariness, a weariness that cried the worthlessness of all things, had fallen upon her. It rested leaden on her soul. It weighed down her body as well, though that mattered little indeed. Yet, since she could minister to that readily, she rose and went to a settee on the opposite side of the room where she arranged herself among the cushions in a posture more luxurious than her rather precise early training usually permitted her to a.s.sume in the presence of others.

There she rested, and soon felt the tides of energy again flowing in her blood, and that same vitality, too, wrought healing even for her agonized soul, though more slowly. The perfect health of her gave her strength to recover speedily from the shock she had sustained. It was this health that made the glory of the flawless skin, white with a living white that revealed the coursing blood beneath, and the crimson lips that bent in smiles so tender, or so wistful, and the limpid eyes in which always lurked fires that sometimes burst into flame, the l.u.s.trous ma.s.s of undulating hair that sparkled in the sunlight like an aureole to her face or framed it in heavy splendors with its shadows, and the supple erectness of her graceful carriage, the lithe dignity of her every movement.

But, at last, she stirred uneasily and sat up. Garson accepted this as a sufficient warrant for speech.

"You know--Aggie told you--that Ca.s.sidy was up here from Headquarters.

He didn't put a name to it, but I'm on." Mary regarded him inquiringly, and he continued, putting the fact with a certain brutal bluntness after the habit of his cla.s.s. "I guess you'll have to quit seeing young Gilder. The bulls are wise. His father has made a holler.

"Don't let that worry you, Joe," she said tranquilly. She allowed a few seconds go by, then added as if quite indifferent: "I was married to d.i.c.k Gilder this morning." There came a squeal of amazement from Aggie, a start of incredulity from Garson.

"Yes," Mary repeated evenly, "I was married to him this morning. That was my important engagement," she added with a smile toward Aggie. For some intuitive reason, mysterious to herself, she did not care to meet the man's eyes at that moment.

Aggie sat erect, her baby face alive with worldly glee.

"My Gawd, what luck!" she exclaimed noisily. "Why, he's a king fish, he is. Gee! But I'm glad you landed him!"

"Thank you," Mary said with a smile that was the result of her sense of humor rather than from any tenderness.

It was then that Garson spoke. He was a delicate man in his sensibilities at times, in spite of the fact that he followed devious methods in his manner of gaining a livelihood. So, now, he put a question of vital significance.

"Do you love him?"