been no other place
as safe as that was. Safe! The word seemed to reach the uttermost depths
of irony. Safe! Well, it was true, wasn't it?

She had not wanted to return there; her soul itself had revolted against
it; but she had dared to do nothing else. And all through that night,
huddled on the edge of the cot bed, her fingers clinging tenaciously to
her revolver as though afraid for even an instant to relinquish it from
her grasp, listening, listening, always listening for a footstep that
might come up from that dark hall below, the footstep that would
climax all the terrors that had surged upon her, her mind had kept on
reiterating, always reiterating those words of the Adventurer--"Gypsy
Nan is Danglar's wife."

And they were still with her, those words. Daylight had come again, and
passed again, and it was evening once more; but those words remained,
insensible to change, immutable in their foreboding. And Rhoda Gray, as
Gypsy Nan, shuddered now as she scuffled along a shabby street deep in
the heart of the East Side. She was Danglar's wife--by proxy. At dawn
that morning when the gray had come creeping into the miserable attic
through the small and dirty window panes, she had fallen on her knees
and thanked God she had been spared that footstep. It was strange! She
had poured out her soul in passionate thankfulness then that Danglar
had not come--and now she was deliberately on her way to seek Danglar
himself! But the daylight had done more than disperse the actual,
physical darkness of the past night; it had brought, if not a measure of
relief, at least a sense of guidance, and the final decision, perilous
though it was, which she meant now to put into execution.

There was no other way--unless she were willing to admit defeat, to give
up everything, her own good name, her father's name, to run from it all
and live henceforth in hiding in some obscure place far away, branded
in the life she would have left behind her as a despicable criminal and
thief. And she could not, would not, do this while her intuition, at
least, inspired her with the faith to believe that there was still a
chance of clearing herself. It was the throw of the dice, perhaps--but
there was no other way. Danglar, and those with him, were at the bottom
of the crime of which she was held guilty. She could not go on as she
had been doing, merely in the hope of stumbling upon some clew that
would serve to exonerate her. There was not time enoug