I could only have effectually answered her by voicing my convictions of her baseness, and that would have driven her away. On the contrary, I praised her constancy, and received my reward from the exquisitely assumed love-light in her glorious brown eyes. The drama took another week to play out. By that time I was quite out of danger, and, although still painfully feeble, my physician assured me that I should soon be able to leave my bed. Marion's joy at that knew no bounds. She covered me with kisses, and insisted that she should write forthwith to her old friend, to inform him of her whereabouts, and the hopes she reposed in him for our happiness and welfare. "What is his name, sweetheart?" I asked. I had not troubled to inquire before. She gave me a bright smile. "I'll tell you on our wedding-day," she replied. "It is a little surprise that I am keeping for you, dear." My thought was: "She is, after all, a poor hand at invention!" I felt convinced that she was simply paving the way with her letter for her escape, and when she went out to post it, I cried aloud in my bitterness of spirit--"To-morrow morning there will come a telegram, and she will leave me!" So it happened! She was seated by my bed, reading me the morning journals, when, of a sudden, a knock sounded on the door, and a waiter entered with a wire upon a salver. "For Nurse Hampton!" he announced. Such was the name she had assumed when first we came to the hotel. Marion started up with a little cry of delight that echoed itself in anguish in my heart. I knew what that envelope contained as well as she. Holding my breath, I watched her with critical intentness. But I had no fault to find. To the very last she maintained her part, playing it like the unimaginably perfect actress that she was. Tearing it open, she read its contents with an expression of happy expectation, which quickly changed before my eyes to fear and passionate concern. "Mon Dieu!" she gasped, and crushing up the paper in her hand, she turned to me. "Agar!" she cried, "he is very ill, dying they say, and he needs me. I must go to him at once!" I had expected it, expected it for days, and yet, none the less, the blow was stunning when it fell. Indeed, in my experience, it is always the long-prevised calamity which causes most dismay. For a while I could not speak, and turning my head I weakly closed my eyes in an effort to conceal the tears which sprang unbidden there. But when she stooped and tried to kiss me, her falseness roused a sudden madness in my breast. Flinging her aside, I started upright in the bed, and all my pent-up scorn found vent. Passion lent me strength to strip her baseness bare, and no whit did I spare her. "Go, you Jade!" I muttered at the last, for I was failing. "Go! and take with you my curse! It is years since I have breathed a prayer--but now I pray to God that never may I see your traitoress face again!"