“Don't judge me too harshly,” she said pleadingly to me. “I know what is right and decent--God planted that too deep in me for them to be able to uproot it. But--oh, they have broken my will! They have broken my will! They have made me a coward, a thing!” And she hid her face in her hands and sobbed. Mrs. Ellersly was about to speak. I could not offer better proof of my own strength of will than the fact that I, with a look and a gesture, put her down. Then I said to the girl: “You must choose now! Woman or thing--which shall it be? If it is woman, then you have me behind you and in front of you and around you. If it is thing--God have mercy on you! Your self-respect, your pride are gone--for ever. You will be like the carpet under his feet to the man whose creature you become.” She came and stood by me, with her back to them. “If you will take me with you now,” she said, “I will go. If I delay, I am lost. I shall not have the courage. And I am sick, sick to death of this life here, of this hideous wait for the highest bidder.” Her voice gained strength and her manner courage as she spoke; at the end she was meeting her mother's gaze without flinching. My eyes had followed hers, and my look was taking in both her mother and her father. I had long since measured them, yet I could scarcely credit the confirmation of my judgment. Had life been smooth and comfortable for that old couple, as it was for most of their acquaintances and friends, they would have lived and died regarding themselves, and regarded, as well-bred, kindly people, of the finest instincts and tastes. But calamity was putting to the test the system on which they had molded their apparently elegant, graceful lives. The storm had ripped off the attractive covering; the framework, the reality of that system, was revealed, naked and frightful. “Anita, go to your room!” almost screamed the old woman, her fury tearing away the last shreds of her cloak of manners. “Your daughter is of age, madam,” said I. “She will go where she pleases. And I warn you that you are deceived by the Langdons. I am not powerless, and”--here I let her have a full look into my red-hot furnaces of wrath--“I stop at nothing in pursuing those who oppose me--at nothing!” Anita, staring at her mother's awful face, was shrinking and trembling as if before the wicked, pale-yellow eyes and quivering, outstretched tentacles of a devil-fish. Clinging to my arm, she let me guide her to the door. Her mother recovered speech. “Anita!” she cried. “What are you doing? Are you mad?” “I think I must be out of my mind,” said Anita. “But, if you try to keep me here, I shall tell him all--_all_.” Her voice suggested that she was about to go into hysterics. I gently urged her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the hall. I put it round her. Before she--or I--realized it, she was in my waiting electric. “Up town,” I said to my man. She tried to get out.