I fell back in my seat, because for the moment I was exhausted. It was not merely the actual situation that took the strength out of me, but what I dreaded when the man came for his prize from the smoking-car. I might count on Larry Strangways to aid me then, but as yet he had not recognized my struggle by so much as glancing round. Nor had I known till this minute how much I cared for the little creature before me, or how deeply I pitied the man she was deserting. I could see her as happier conditions would have made her, and him as he might have become if his nature had not been warped by pride. Any impulse to strike back at him had long ago died within me. It might as well have died, since I never had the nerve to act on it, even when I had the chance. She turned on me again, with unexpected fierceness. "It doesn't matter whether I believe all those things or not--now. It's too late. I've left home. I've--I've gone away with him." Though I felt like a spent prize-fighter forced back into the ring, I raised myself in my chair. I even smiled, dimly, in an effort to be encouraging. "You've left home and you've gone away; but you won't have gone away with him till--till you've actually joined him." "I've actually joined him already. His things are there beside that chair." She nodded backward. "By the time we've passed Providence he'll be--he'll be getting ready to come for me." I said, more significantly than I really understood: "But we haven't passed Providence as yet." To this she seemingly paid no attention, nor did I give it much myself. "When he comes," she exclaimed, lyrically, "it will be like a marriage--" I ventured much as I interrupted. "No, it will never be like a marriage. There'll be too much that's unholy in it all for anything like a true marriage ever to become possible, not even if death or divorce--and it will probably be the one or the other--were to set you free." That she found these words arresting I could tell by the stunned way in which she stared. "Death or divorce!" she echoed, after long waiting. "He--he may divorce me quietly--I hope he will--but--but he won't--he won't die." "He'll die if you kill him," I declared, grimly. I continued to be grim. "He may die before long, whether you kill him or not--the chances are that he will. But living or dead, as I've said already, he'll stand between you and anything you look for as happiness--after to-night." She threw herself back, into the depths of her chair and moaned. Luckily there was no one near enough to observe the act. As we talked in low tones we could not be heard above the rattle of the train, and I think I passed as a companion or trained nurse in attendance on a nervous invalid. "Oh, what's the use?" she exclaimed at last, in a fit of desperation. "I've done it. It's too late. Every one will know I've gone away--even if I get out at Providence."