e of Mart's humble suing, her half-forgotten scruples
were revived. Her uneasiness began again. A decision was finally and
definitely thrust upon her. Instantly she was beset by all her doubts
and desires, and the sky darkened with clouds of trouble.

To make Mart happy was still her wish, but the way was not so easy of
choice, nor so simple to follow as it had once seemed. The briers were
thick before her feet. There was so much of personal gratification, so
much of selfish pleasure, in remaining his companion, warmed and
defended by all the comfort and dignity which his wealth had brought to
her, that it seemed a kind of treachery to halt with her duty half done.
To be his spouse, to become the mother of his children, this alone would
entitle her to his bounty. "I can't do it!" she cried out--"I can't, I
can't!" And yet not to do his will was to remain a pensioner and to be
under indictment as an adventuress.

She had read somewhere these words from a great philosopher: "The woman
who bears a child to any man should instantly be lawfully seized of
one-half his goods, for by that sublime act she takes her life in her
hand as truly as the soldier who charges upon an invading host. The
anguish of maternity should sanctify every woman."

On the other side of her hedge lay enticing freedom. It seemed at times
as though to be again in the little office of the Golden Eagle Hotel
would be a more perfect happiness than this she now enjoyed--but that,
too, was illusory. How could she repay the money she had used? The
moment she left Marshall Haney she would not only be poor, she would be
profoundly in his debt. Where could she find the money to repay him and
to make her schooling possible?

Perplexity was in her darkened eyes. Happiness and sorrow, doubt and
delight grew along each path--thickly interwoven--and decision became
each day more difficult. It was hateful to lie under the charge of
having married merely for a gambler's money, and yet to plunge her
mother and herself back into poverty would seem to others the act of one
insane. As she pondered the problem of her life she lost all of her
girlish lightness of heart and lay in her luxurious bed a brooding,
troubled woman.

She could have gone on indefinitely with the half-filial, half-fraternal
relationship into which she and Mart had fallen, but the thought of that
other most intimate, most elemental union which his touch had made more
definite than ever before pro