dawned.

"You will stay on!" Thornton snapped the words out. "You are my wife,
and you will stay on!"

"Very well. I will stay," Meredith turned and walked away.

Thornton looked after her and his face softened. Something in him was
touched by the spirit under the cold, crude exterior of the girl. It was
worth while--he would try to win her!

And that was the best hour in Thornton's life.

Could he have held to it all might have gone well, but Thornton's
successes had been due to dash and daring--the slow, patient method was
not his, and against his wife's stern indifference he recoiled after a
short time--she bored him; she no longer seemed worth while; not worth
the struggle nor the holding to absurd and rigid demands. Still, by her
smiling acquiescence, Meredith made things possible that otherwise might
not have been so, and she was a charming hostess when occasion demanded.

During the second bleak year of their marriage Meredith accompanied
Thornton to England--he was often obliged to go there on prolonged
business--but she never repeated the experiment.

While it was comparatively easy to play her difficult role in her home,
it was unbearable among her husband's people, who complicated matters by
assuming that she must, of necessity, be honoured and uplifted by the
alliance she had made.

After the return from England Thornton abandoned his puritanical life
and returned to the easy ways of his bachelor days.

Meredith knew perfectly well what was going on, but she had her own
income and lived her own detached and barren life, so she clung to what
seemed to her the last shred of duty she owed to her marriage ties--she
served in her husband's home as hostess, and by her mere presence she
avoided betraying him to the scorn of those who could not know all, and
so might not judge justly.

Then the crisis came that shocked Meredith into consciousness and forced
her to act, for the first time in her life, independently.

Thornton was about to go, again, to England. The day before he sailed he
came into his wife's sitting room, where she lay upon a couch, suffering
from a severe headache.

She never mentioned her pain or loneliness, and to Thornton's careless
glance she appeared as she always did--pale, cold, and self-centred.

"Well, I sail at noon to-morrow!" he said, seating himself astride a
chair, folding his arms and settling his chin on them.

"Yes? Is there anything particular that you want me to l