h a painful twist to dart
her venomous scorn at Helen. A fortnight ago the doctors had given
Mrs. Hilmer a scant six months of life. But now Fred Starratt knew
that she would live as long as her spirits had vengeance to feed upon.

Thus had the door closed upon Hilmer and his crippled gaoler. Already
Helen Starratt had gained the street corner. Fred was seized with an
impulse to overtake her, but it had died as quickly. There was nothing
he could offer ... not even a lodging for the night. Instead he had
turned and walked briskly in an opposite direction.

* * * * *

As he drew nearer town the cries of the newsboys grew more insistent
... so insistent that Fred bought a paper. By this time they had
cleared away the charred wreckage of Storch's shack, discovering the
secret which its ruins had concealed. He found himself wondering how
soon they would link him with the still-born plot which had achieved
so much tragedy in spite of its miscarriage. Of Ginger there was
little trace. She had been caught up in a winding sheet of flame, a
chariot of fire which had swept clean her pitiful and outraged body...
Again he saw her face, wistful in the glare of that portentous noon,
framed by the outline of Storch's doorway, heard himself call her name
in agony, and woke to find only a memory answering him. And there came
to him a realization of the terrible beauty of that moment which had
released her spirit in white-heated transfiguration.

A sudden pity for the living began to well up within him ... for
Hilmer in the relentless grip of the harpy who would tear at his
content with her scrawny fingers ... for Mrs. Hilmer, condemned to
feed to the end upon the bitter fruits of hatred ... for his wife,
drifting to a pallid fate made up of petty adjustments and
compromises. Yes ... he found himself pitying Helen Starratt most of
all. Because he had a feeling that she would go on to the end cloaking
her primitive impulses in a curious covering of self-deception. She
would never understand ... never! She would always be restless,
straining at the conventions, but unable or unwilling to pay the price
of full freedom. And her remaining days would be spent in a futile
pulling at the chains which her own cowardice had forged. She would
not even have the memory of bitter-sweet delights.

He came from these musings to discover that his feet had strayed
instinctively to the old garden which provoked the memor