But what if he refused to release her from her promise? And what if he did release her? What then? There still remained the unsolvable problem of what she was to do. Her brother had told her that positions in Winnipeg during the winter months were impossible to get. Gertie had taunted her with the same fact. She had less than six dollars in the world. After she had paid her bill she would have little more than four. It was hopeless. "Trapped, trapped, trapped, by your own mad temper, trapped!" And then more plans; each one kindling fresh hope in her heart only to have it extinguished, like a torch thrown into a pool, when they proved, on analysis, each to be more impracticable than its predecessor. And then, the refrain. And then, more plans. It was a haggard and weary-looking bride that presented herself to the expectant bridegroom the next morning. The great circles under her eyes told the story of a sleepless night. But nothing in Taylor's manner betrayed that he noticed that she was looking otherwise than as usual. While she was dressing, Nora had come to a final decision. Quite calmly and unemotionally she would explain the situation to him. She would point out the impossibility, the absurdity even, of keeping an agreement entered into, by one of the parties at least, in hot blood, and thoroughly repented of, on later and saner reflection. In the remote event of this unanswerable argument failing to move him, she would appeal to his honor as a man not to hold her, a woman, to so unfair a bargain. She had even prepared the well-balanced sentences with which she would begin. But as she stood with her cold hand in his warm one, he forestalled her by exhibiting, not without a certain boyish pride, the marriage license and the plain gold band which was to bind her. If these familiar and rather commonplace objects had been endowed with some evil magic, they could not have deprived her of the power of speech more effectively. Without a protest, she permitted herself to be led to the waiting carriage, provided in honor of the occasion. It seemed but a moment later that she found herself being warmly embraced by a motherly looking woman, who, it transpired, was the wife of the clergyman who had just performed the ceremony. From the parsonage they drove directly to the station. CHAPTER XI The journey had seemed endless: it was already nightfall when they arrived at the town of Prentice, where they were to get off and drive some twelve miles farther to her new home. And yet, endless and unspeakably wearying as it was, her heart contracted to find that it was at an end.