When Margaret woke next morning it was with a bewildered sense of something wrong,--the dull ache we have in the gray dawn before returning consciousness brings it all back to us, and makes it a sharp pain. Then, as the events of the night before came back, and the dread of to-day forced itself upon her, she closed her eyes in a sick longing to go to sleep and never wake. This was the end! They had had words, bitter words, before--but never like this. How could she forget his cruel thrusts, his broken faith, which he had even flaunted in her face? How could the barrier between them which her passionate challenge had raised be broken down? "She must be all or nothing." Yes, and it was true! as true to-day as it was yesterday and would be for all time. Only his hand could break that barrier down. And suppose he would not.... Well! so be it. It seemed to her that her heart was numbed and could never be warmed into life again. There rose before her a picture she had seen one day--a man with wretched face, a woman who had cast herself on a couch in an attitude suggesting the abandon of despair, and between them on the table a still form that she thought at first glance was their dead baby, only that she saw the wings and knew that it was Love--dead Love. It was very late when she had gone to bed the night before, and still Victor had not come. She had fallen immediately into the deep sleep of exhaustion which comes to us sometimes when a crisis is past, even though it has brought the worst. Women who hang sleepless and wide-eyed over a sick-bed have been known to fall into a sleep like that of death, when all is over, their wild grief swallowed up in nature's merciful oblivion. So it had been with Margaret. Had he come in while she slept? She stepped to her husband's door and peeped cautiously in. The bed was undisturbed. She went back to her own room and stood there shaking as with an ague. What did it mean? Then she sat down and thought--thought deeply--going over all the wretched quarrel,--trying to judge between them, to see where--if anywhere--he was right and she was wrong. She had been passionate--yes, and had said bitter things. But they were true! And, she told herself despairingly, it was not the things they _said_! The trouble lay back of that.... If only it had been something else! But this! ... oh, how could she compromise? The words of that odious Mrs. Bomprey came to her--"Men are naughty creatures, my dear. Wise women learn to shut their eyes!" "Why must they shut their eyes?" she asked, fiercely. The very insinuation was dishonoring to both. But--was the woman right? Were all men like this?... Her soul grew sick. Then--no! no! _no!_ she told herself in passionate protest--it was not true! She would not believe this withering, blasting thing. There was her father! Though all the world should rise up and say there was no truth in men, she still would know--there was her father!