"I was young and—over-confident," she murmured. "I looked ahead to the day when I should be free again and you would be added to the—well, the gains. Now you know the whole truth about me. I was counting on you, looking forward to you, even as I stood beside him and took the vows. You were always uppermost in my calculations. I never left you out of them. Even to this day, to this very moment, I continue to count on you. I shall never be able to put the hope out of my mind. I have tried it and failed. You may despise me if you will, but nothing can kill this mean little thing that lurks in here. I don't know what you will call it, Braden, but I call it loyalty to you." "Loyalty! My God!" he cried out hoarsely. "Yes, loyalty," she cried. "Mean as I am, mean as I have been, I have never wavered an instant in my love for you. Oh, I'm not pleading for anything. I'm not begging. I don't ask for anything,—not even your good opinion. I am only telling you the truth. Mr. Thorpe knew it all. He knew that I loved you, and he knew that I counted on having you after he was out of the way. And here is something else that you never knew, or suspected. He believed that my love for you, my eagerness, my longing to be free to call you back again, would be the means of releasing him from the thing that was killing him. He counted on me to—I will put it as gently as I can—to free myself. I believe in my soul that he married me with that awful idea in his mind." For a long time they were silent. Braden was staring at her, horror in his eyes. She remained standing before him, motionless. Lutie's nurse passed through the little hall outside, but they did not see or hear her. A door closed softly; the faint crying of the baby went unheard. "You are wrong there," he said at last, thickly. "I happen to know what his motives were, Anne." "Oh, I know," she said wearily. "To prove to you how utterly worthless I am,—or was. Well, it may have been that. I hope it was. I would like to think it of him instead of the other thing. I would like to think of him as sacrificing himself for your sake, instead of planning to sacrifice me for his sake. It is a terrible thought, Braden. He begged me to give him those tablets, time and again. I—I couldn't have done that, not even with you as the prize." She shuddered. A queer, indescribable chill ran through his veins. "Do you—have you ever thought that he may have held you out as a prize—for me?" "You mean?" She went very white. "God above us, no! If I thought _that_, Braden, then there would be something lying between us, something that even such as I could not overcome." "Just the same," he went on grimly, "he went to his death with a word of praise on his lips for you, Anne. He told me you were deserving of something better than the fate he had provided for you. He was sorry. It—it may have been that he was pleading your cause, that—"