dreadful legacy from her prison life. On waking,
her relief at finding she was not, as usual, alone was so great that for
the first time she clung to Herrick as she might have done in happier
days; and as he soothed her and pushed the damp golden curls from her
brow she spoke naturally, with none of the resentment she had hitherto
displayed.

Her husband's heart melted towards her in this gentler mood; and long
after she had fallen asleep again, soothed by his presence, he sat
watching her uneasy slumber with a feeling of compassion which, had she
realized it, must surely have done something to bridge the gulf which
now yawned between them.

In the morning she was her hard, mocking self again; and Herrick's
patience was sorely tried in the days which followed.

It seemed, indeed, as though she had stated her feelings for him
correctly, as though she did really hate him with a bitter and
relentless hatred. The prison life had changed her whole being, turned
her from a brilliant, reckless, worldly girl, warmhearted and
extravagant, but generous to a fault, into a cold, malignant, callous
woman, nursing a grudge until it attained gigantic proportions, and
fully resolved to exact from her husband and the world a heavy payment
for the humiliating punishment she had been forced to undergo.

Herrick could never discover that she felt that punishment to be
deserved. The whole world was to blame, but never she herself. It was
the fault of her husband, who had kept her short of money; of the
tradespeople who had pressed her, of the usurers who had got her into
their clutches--the fault of everyone save Eva Herrick; and the fact
that they had all, as it were, combined against her, that together they
had been too much for her, embittered her outlook on life to such a
degree that she was positively incapable of any reasonable analysis of
her own guilt.

It was her husband against whom her resentment was chiefly directed.
With all the perversity of her ill-regulated, half-formed mind, she
refused to realize the fact that it had been absolutely impossible for
Herrick to take her crime on to his own shoulders. She clung childishly
to the notion that if he had wished he could have borne the blame and
endured the consequences; and since there is no reason to doubt that to
a girl in her position her life in prison was a horrible experience, her
bitterness is perhaps hardly to be wondered at, after all.

Her sentence had left on sou