ugh had never touched me with his lips, and now, when he came
to touch me with his hands, I struck him. It was a serpent's house, and I
left it.

"My father had left me a comfortable fortune, and I went into a house of my
own. Day after day they came to me, and I knew that they feared I was going
to secure a divorce. During the six months that followed I learned other
things about the man who was legally my husband. He was everything that was
vile. Brazenly he went into public places with women of dishonour, and I
hid my face in shame.

"His father died, and for a time Mortimer FitzHugh became one of the
talked-about spendthrifts of London. Swiftly he gambled and dissipated
himself into comparative poverty. And now, learning that I would not get a
divorce, he began to regard me as a slave in chains. I remember, one time,
that he succeeded in laying his hands on me, and they were like the touch
of things that were slimy and poisonous. He laughed at my revulsion. He
demanded money of me, and to keep him away from me I gave it to him. Again
and again he came for money; I suffered as I cannot tell you, but never
once in my misery did I weaken in my promise to my father and to myself.
But--at last--I ran away.

"I went to Egypt, and then to India. A year later I learned that Mortimer
FitzHugh had gone to America, and I returned to London. For two years I
heard nothing of him; but day and night I lived in fear and dread. And then
came the news that he had died, as you read in the newspaper clipping. I
was free! For a year I believed that; and then, like a shock that had come
to destroy me, I was told that he _was not dead_ but that he was alive, and
in a place called Tete Jaune Cache, in British Columbia. I could not live
in the terrible suspense that followed. I determined to find out for myself
if he was alive or dead. And so I came, John Aldous. And he is dead. He is
down there--dead. And I am glad that he is dead!"

"And if he was not dead," said Aldous quietly, "I would kill him!"

He could find nothing more to say than that. He dared trust himself no
further, and in silence he held out his hands, and for a moment Joanne gave
him her own. Then she withdrew them, and with a little gesture, and the
smile which he loved to see trembling about her mouth, she said:

"Donald will think this is scandalous. We must go back and apologize!"

She led him down the slope, and her face was filled with the pink flush of
a wild ro