ill and mitigated his mistakes, he had yielded to
her plea just in time to confuse the issue between her and him.

She read the circular and the scrawl with a sinking heart.
"Nevertheless, I shall go!" she tried to protest. "True, he won't send
out this circular if I do. But what does it matter, one infamy more or
less in him? Besides, he will accomplish his purpose in some other way
of which I shall not know." But this was only the beginning of the
battle. Punishment on punishment for an act which seemed right at the
time had made her morbid, distrustful of herself. And she could not
conquer the dread lest her longing to be free was blinding her, was
luring her on to fresh calamities, involving all whom she cared for,
all who cared for her. Whichever way she looked she could see only a
choice between wrongs. To stay under the same roof with him or at Dawn
Hill--self-respect put that out of the question. To free herself--how
could she, when it meant sacrificing her parents and also the thousands
shivering under the extortions of his monopoly?

In the end she chose the course that seemed to combine the least evil
with the most good. She would go to the Eyrie, and the world and her
father and mother would think she was absenting herself from her
husband to attend to the bringing up of her boy. She would see even
less of Scarborough than she saw when she was last at Saint X.

That afternoon she wrote to Dumont:

Since we had our talk I have found out about Leonora. It is impossible
for me to stay here. I shall go West to-morrow. But I shall not go to
my father's; because of your circular I shall go to the Eyrie,
instead--at least for the present.

PAULINE DUMONT.

Two weeks after she was again settled at the Eyrie, Langdon appeared in
Saint X, alleging business at the National Woolens' factories there.
He accepted her invitation to stay with her, and devoted himself to
Gladys, who took up her flirtation with him precisely where she had
dropped it when they bade each the other a mock-mournful good-by five
months before. They were so realistic that Pauline came to the
satisfying conclusion that her sister-in-law was either in earnest with
Langdon or not in earnest with anybody. If she had not been avoiding
Scarborough, she would probably have seen Gladys' real game--to use
Langdon as a stalking horse for him.

"No doubt Scarborough, like all men, imagines he's above jealousy,"