What was it in the words that brought Mary to a sudden pause? Her mother had always been, like most drudges, a gossip, and had sought, in repeating scandal about her acquaintances, that relief from drudgery which she knew how to obtain only by this second-hand thrill of evil. The girl had heard and disregarded the telling of many such a tale, and yet, to-night, she stood there first listening in uncomprehending horror to the narrative and then awaiting the inevitable paternal comment upon it. "Tuke 'er bahk, hey?" rumbled Owen Denbigh. "Well, ef she bay sooch a fule, she deserves the scandal ov't. Thank God no youngling o' ourn ever went the devil's way. I hahve ahlways bin sure what I'd do to 'un ef she did, though." He paused a moment, as if to have his wife inquire as to the terrible punishment that he had reserved for such an error, and then, as no inquiry was forthcoming, he gave his statement at any rate, with all the cold ferocity of a Judge Jeffries pronouncing sentence. "Bay 'un thirty year old an' noot another sin ag'in 'un," he declared, "I would beat 'un within a bare inch o' 'er deeth, an' turn 'un oot to live the life 'un had picked fur herself!" The whole intent of that speech Mary was incapable of comprehending, but she understood enough to tremble and then to fan to destructive fury the fire of her rebellion. Of a sudden, the atmosphere of the house had become unendurable. She was gasping like a sparrow under a bell-glass. Stealthily she crept into the hall. Carefully she took her coat and faded hat from the rack. Very gently she opened the front door and stole into the street. She felt dumbly that the world was wrong, that youth should not have to work, and that to seize the fruit of pleasure should not be matter far punishment, but for congratulation. I do not think that she meant to pass by the hotel that evening. I do not believe that most of us, in such moments, are actuated any more by motive than we are directed by discretion. Nevertheless, when the clutch of her emotions had enough loosened from her throat to permit her to take account of her whereabouts, the time, and the place, it was a quarter after six by the town-clock; Mary was just before the plate-glass window where the drummers sat, and, only a minute later, the stranger of the morning was again at her side. "Von't you chust say that you're not _mad_ vith me?" he was asking. She was so frightened that she was conscious of no other definite sensation, much less of any ordered thought or opinion; but she looked fairly at him, and of what she saw she was immediately fully aware.