they knew in Winnipeg? But that girl hadn't stayed all
the time. To do her justice, Rachel had made no secret of that. He
remembered her attacking him when he came home for having left her for
three or four days quite alone. Why had he been so long away? Probably a
mere bluff--though he had been taken in by it at the time, and being
still in love with her, had done his best to appease her. But what had
she been doing all the time she was alone? In the light of what he knew
now, she might have been doing anything. _Was the child his_?

So, piece by piece, with no auditor but his own brain, shut in upon
himself by the isolation which his own life had forged for him, he built
up a hideous indictment against the woman he had once loved. He wished he
had put off his interview with her till he had had time to think things
out more. As he came to realize how she had tricked and bested him, her
offence became incredibly viler than it seemed at first. He had let her
off far too cheaply that night at the farm. Scenes of past violence
returned upon him, and the memory of them seemed to satisfy a rising
thirst. Especially the recollection of the divorce proceedings maddened
him. His morbid brain took hold on them with a grip that his will could
not loosen. Her evidence--he had read it in the Winnipeg newspapers--the
remarks of the prating old judge--and of her cad of a lawyer--good God!
And all the time it was _she_ who ought to have been in the dock, and he
the accuser, if he had known--if he hadn't been a trusting idiot, a
bleating fool.

A brooding intensity of rage, as this inward process went on, gradually
drowned in him every other feeling and desire. The relief and amusement
of the money and its spending were soon over. He thought no more of it.
Anita, and his child even--the child for whom he really cared--passed out
of his mind. As he sat drinking whisky in the dull respectable lodging,
at night after Anita had gone to bed, he felt the sinister call of those
dark woods above Rachel's farm, and tasted the sweetness of his new power
to hurt her, now that she had paid him this blackmail, and damned herself
thereby--past help. She had threatened him. But what could she do--or the
Yankee fellow either? She had given the show away. As for his promise,
when he had no right to make it,--no right to allow such a woman to get
off scot-free, with plenty of money and a new lover.

So on the Thursday evening he took train for X. It wa