"You knew--I mean about the cause--the morphine?"

"I never guessed until that night. Then, as soon as I got over
the first awful shock, I realized he was a madman. He talked
incoherently--raved--shouted--threatened me with horrible things. I
can't speak of them. Later, he quieted down a little, but that was after
he had come down into the cabin to--to drug himself.... It was very
terrible--that tiny, pitching cabin, with the swinging, smoking lamp,
and the madman sitting there, muttering to himself over the glass in
which the morphine was dissolving.... It happened three times before the
wreck; I thought I should go out of my own mind."

She shuddered, her face tragic and pitiful.

"Poor girl!" he murmured inadequately.

"And that--that was why you were searching the beach so closely!"

"Yes--for the other fellow. I--didn't find him."

A moment later she said thoughtfully: "It was the man you saw watching
me on the beach, I think."

"I assumed as much. Drummond had a lot of money, I fancy--enough to hire
a desperate man to do almost anything.... The wages of sin--"

"Don't!" she begged. "Don't make me think of that!"

"Forgive me," he said.

For a little she sat, head bowed, brooding.

"Hugh!" she cried, looking up to search his face narrowly--"Hugh, you've
not been pretending--?"

"Pretending?" he repeated, thick-witted.

"Hugh, I could never forgive you if you'd been pretending. It would be
too cruel.... Ah, but you haven't been! Tell me you haven't!"

"I don't understand.... Pretending what?"

"Pretending you didn't know who I was--pretending to fall in love with
me just because you were sorry for me, to make me think it was _me_ you
loved and not the woman you felt bound to take care of, because
you'd--you had--"

"Mary, listen to me," he interrupted. "I swear I didn't know you.
Perhaps you don't understand how wonderfully you've changed. It's hard
for me to believe you can be one with the timid and distracted little
girl I married that rainy night. You're nothing like.... Only, that
night on the stage, as _Joan Thursday_, you _were_ that girl again. Max
told me it was make-up; I wouldn't believe him; to me you hadn't changed
at all; you hadn't aged a day.... But that morning when I saw you first
on the Great South Beach--I never dreamed of associating you with my
wife. Do you realize I had never seen you in full light--never knew the
colour of your hair?... Dear, I didn't know, believe me. It