"He went to try and find help," she said. "He was out all night in the storm. I do not know how far he must have walked. I know the nearest house was five or six miles away--and there was no horse there--the man had driven to some town that morning. It was almost daylight before Mr. Thornton at last came back with a team. We were forty miles from here--we sent the team to the nearest town for gasoline and then motored back." She stopped--and then, with a catch in her voice: "He--he was very good to me." "Good to me"--the words seemed to stab at Madison, seemed to ring in his ears and goad him with a fiercer jealousy--and her story of the night, what she had been saying, save those words, was as nothing, meant nothing, was swept from his consciousness--and only she, standing there before him, glorious, maddening in her beauty, remained. Soul, mind and body leaped into fiery passion--she was his, and his she always would be--those eyes, those lips, the white throat, those perfect arms to cling about his neck--and all of heaven and hell and earth were naught beside her. "I love you!"--his face was white, his words fierce-breathed, almost incoherent--and he leaned toward her with a sudden, uncontrollable movement, his arms sweeping out to clasp her. "I love you, Helena--I love you. Do you understand--it's _you_! You--I love you!" "You _love_ me!"--she retreated from him, but her head was raised now, and her voice rang with a bitterness cold as the touch of death. "Love! What do you know of _love_! We talk plain, you say. Love--love for me! Passion, vice, lust, sin--and, oh, my God, degradation and misery and shame--love! Love! That is _your_ love!" He stood for a moment and stared at her again--and her face was as pallid ivory. And something seemed to daze him, and he brushed his hand across his eyes--the logic was faulty, torn and pitiful, and he groped after the flaw. "It's--it's your love as well as mine," he said in a stumbling way--then his brain flashed quick into action. "My love--what other love have _you_ known but that?" he cried. "It's _our_ love--the love we have known together--and we're going back to it--see? I've had enough of this. You pack your trunks--and pack them quick! We're going to beat it out of here! We're going back to our--love. We're going back where I don't have to sit around like a puling fool and watch Thornton chuck you under the chin--we're going where he'll want a tombstone if he ever shows his face there. You thought the game would hold me to the last jackpot--did you? Well, I've got enough--and there's no game big enough to make me stand for this. That looks like love--doesn't it?" He burst again into a sudden, mirthless laugh--and once again swept his hand across his eyes. "We're going to beat it out of here now--to-night--to-morrow morning." But now she had drawn further away from him--and there was a frightened look in her eyes, and her lips quivered pitifully.