possibly
that was all.

Yet revelations were being made to him. Facts were arraying themselves and
marching before him for review. Suspicion was pounding at him like a body
blow that is repeated accurately and relentlessly in the same vulnerable
spot.

Why had Sylvia prevented him from knowing anything about her home life?
Why had she kept him and her father apart? Why had Eagle Pass ceased to
know him, immediately after his marriage? And Peterson, that day they had
gone across the river together--why had Peterson behaved so clownishly,
following his familiar greeting of Sylvia? Peterson hadn't behaved like
himself at all. And why had she been so reluctant to tell him about the
thing that had happened in her father's house? Was that the course an
innocent woman would have pursued?

What was the explanation of these things? Was the world cruel by choice to
a girl against whom nothing more serious could be charged than that she
was obscure and poor?

These reflections seemed to rob Harboro of the very marrow in his bones.
He would have fought uncomplainingly to the end against injustice. He
would cheerfully have watched the whole world depart from him, if he had
had the consciousness of righting in a good cause. He had thought
scornfully of the people who had betrayed their littleness by ignoring
him. But what if they had been right, and his had been the offense against
them?

He found it almost unbearably difficult to walk through the streets of
Eagle Pass and on across the river. What had been his strength was now his
weakness. His loyalty to a good woman had been his armor; but what would
right-thinking people say of his loyalty to a woman who had deceived him,
and who felt no shame in continuing to deceive him, despite his efforts to
surround her with protection and love?

And yet ... what did he know against Sylvia? She had gone riding--that was
all. That, and the fact that she had made a secret of the matter, and had
perhaps given him a false account of the manner in which she had paid for
her outings.

He must make sure of much more than he already knew. Again and again he
clinched his hands in the office and on the street. He would not wrong the
woman he loved. He would not accept the verdict of other people. He would
have positive knowledge of his own before he acted.

CHAPTER XXVI

Harboro had admitted a drop of poison to his veins and it was rapidly
spreading to every fibre of his being. He