He would be a marked man. John Ryder, the man who had married a woman offhand, without knowing anything about her! At least, he had known her but seven days. And she had run away from him with another man! It would be a nice bit for the scandal mongers. It would be something he could never live down. Every man with whom he did business hereafter would be saying to himself while in Ryder's presence: "There must be something the matter with this fellow. They say his wife ran away from him the day after they were married." Yet, even these thoughts were not the bitterest in his soul. Higher than the shame of having his trouble publicly known and discussed, rose the fact that he had lost the treasure to which his heart clung. Ruth was the one woman in the world whom he had ever, or could ever, love. He felt it--he knew it! Short as their acquaintance had been, Ryder knew that he loved Ruth as he should never be able to love another woman. He had thought he loved her when he had first seen her on the deck of the _Minnequago_; but since their marriage--since the old clergyman had pronounced them man and wife--a deeper and more tender feeling for his girlish bride had grown in his mind and heart. On shipboard, coming over, she had merely been a beautiful creature--a woman of heart and mind and of fine physique--who attracted his admiration and fired his passion. Once bound, as he supposed legally and holily to Ruth Mont, his love for her had taken on a deeper meaning. He was not a man who philosophized much, or who catechised his own motives or thoughts; but he knew that a subtle change had taken place in his feelings toward the woman even before the minister had joined their hands. It had been half pique and half determination to obtain his own desire that had made him write that peremptory note to Miss Mont before the _Minnequago_ docked. It grated upon him to think of a man like Marks bearing off such a prize, even in a sordid business transaction. But the instant he had seen Ruth waiting for him when he landed--the moment she had put her hands into his--the instant she had whispered: "I will marry you," a greater love had leaped into full and glowing life in John Ryder's bosom. It was no longer a matter of mutual attraction, or the charm of her beautiful face and figure, or her mental attributes that held him captive. From that moment of their meeting on the dock his heart knew her heart; they had become one. And this knowledge, which he could not scorn or overlook despite all that had happened since, made the darker part of the puzzle. Had he not been sure of his love and of her love, he could have understood in part how she had come to leave him and go with this other man. For he could not accept the suggestion that all her sweetness and sheer happiness as a bride was merely a pose. That, as an actress, she had simulated a part. No, the woman did not live, he believed, who could so befool him.