"But I loved--my wife--I mean, this woman--Jennie, here!" "So do _I_ love her; more than you do or ever will know how to do! What you have done we'll do. Is it worse for us than it was for you? What's the difference?" "But she's my _wife_! Why, _Jennie_!" He held out a hand to her. "So was Laura Rawn your wife, my wife's mother," went on Halsey. "What's the difference?" Virginia Rawn stepped between the two. "I'm as much to blame as any one of us all," she said quietly. "I sold out to you, didn't I, Mr. Rawn--down there in New York? I married you, didn't I? Very well, what you did, I have done. No more, and not without equal cause. I love him. I'm going to marry him. You and I are going to be divorced--if we were not I'd go to him anyhow. I hate you, I loathe you! My God! how I detest and loathe the sight of you! Go away--go away from us! You're not any part of a man!" XI "It's true!" gasped John Rawn to himself; "My God, it's true! She said that--I heard her--to me? What have I done to deserve this? ... I ought to kill you," said he to Halsey slowly. "Of course you ought," said Halsey. "If you were any portion of a man you would. But you've tried that, and you know where you ended." "But Halsey--Charley!--you don't stop to think!" began Rawn pitifully. "You will go back--you will go back to the factory, in the morning? You will help me pull it together, won't you?" "No, not one step back to the factory--never in the world! I'm done with that. I'm going away somewhere, and she's going with me, I don't know where. Let some one else work out what you thought we could do, and let some one else take the consequences--it's not for me. You've got what you earned--I suppose I'll get what I've earned, too. I don't care about that any more." Rawn could not answer the young man as he went on, slowly, dully, bitterly. "If I've been traitor to any of my own creed I reckon God'll punish me. Very well; I will take my punishment on my shoulders. I've no apologies to make in a place like this. "Haven't you gone up--oughtn't we to go up now--up-stairs?" he added at last. He put down Virginia's arms from his shoulders; for once more she had come to him. Rawn sighed. "I suppose I must go up there," he said vaguely. He turned and walked away, heavy, stumbling. CHAPTER XI THE MEANS--AND THE END I Halsey turned toward Virginia. They did not again embrace, but stood silent, almost apathetic now. Passion was far away from them, indeed had never fully seized them. The despair in human love was theirs; and love is half despair. She might have been some beautiful statue in white marble, so cold was she; and as for the man who faced her, his anger gone, he himself might have been the image of hopelessness. Central figures of an irreparable ruin, and seeing no avenue to happiness, for the time neither had word for the other. At last Halsey raised his head, as some sound caught his ear. "What's that?" he said.