proof,--proof, that you went to his rooms that day!" he stormed.

"I did nothing of the sort, and I am not going to quarrel with you while
you are drunk!"

Drunk he was, but not as she understood drunkenness. In the terrible
extremity to which his crime had brought him he was having recourse to
drugs.

"You say you have proof,--don't be absurd, Marsh, you know you haven't!"
she added uneasily.

"You were with North in his rooms--" he insisted.

He was conscious of a strange wonder at himself that he could believe
this, and yet aside from such gusts of rage as these, his doubt of her
made no difference in their life together. Surely this was the measure
of his degradation.

"I am not going to discuss this matter with you!" Evelyn said.

"Aren't you? Well, I guess you will. Do you know you may be summoned
into court?"

"Why?" she demanded, with a nervous start.

"North may want to prove that he was in his rooms at the hour the
murder is supposed to have been committed; all he needs is your
testimony,--it would make a nice scandal, wouldn't it?"

"Has he asked this?" Evelyn questioned.

"Not yet!"

"Then I don't think he ever will," she said quietly.

"Do you suppose he will be fool enough to go to the penitentiary, or
hang, to save _your_ reputation?" Langham asked harshly.

"I think Jack North would be almost fool enough for that," she answered
with conviction.

"Well, I don't,--you were too easy,--men don't risk their necks for your
sort!" he mocked. "Look here, you had an infatuation for North,--you
admitted it,--only this time it went too far! What was the trouble, did
he get sick of the business and throw you over?"

"How coarse you are, Marsh!" and she colored angrily, not at his words,
however, but at the memory of that last meeting with North.

"It's a damn rotten business, and I'll call it by what name I please! If
you are summoned, it will be your word against his; you have told me you
were not in his rooms--"

"I was _not_ there--" she said, and as she said it she wondered why she
did not tell the truth, admit the whole thing and have it over with. She
was tired of the wrangling, and her hatred of North had given way to
pity, yet when Langham replied:

"All right. You are my wife, and North can hang, but he shan't save
himself by ruining you if _I_ can help it!"

She answered: "I have told you that I wasn't there, Marsh."

"Would you swear that you weren't there?" Langham asked eagerl