"God! I may be a wicked woman, but how I have waited, how I have prayed, to be delivered from him! Yes, prayed on my knees for him to die--to make me free, to give me a chance! But what's the use? I thought I was so clever! Clever?... I'm a stupid little fool! Career? I haven't the ghost of a show! I know it now! There's no more hoping! I've had chance after chance; what good did they do me? That last one--that opened my eyes! Blainey's right; he didn't mince words. It was what I needed; it convinced me! But, God! if he would only die!" Dodo had sat breathlessly, even shrinking back in her chair, before these passions in the raw, flung out without pretense of concealment, horror-stricken. "But what will you do then?" she cried, terrified at the expression in Winona's eyes. The girl's eyes came to hers, cold, resolved, disdainful; but she did not reply. A horrible thought suddenly possessed Dodo, as of an ominous echo out of her own past. "You won't go back!" she cried, shuddering. "Go back to that? To that loneliness, that starvation, that slavery, after knowing this?" she cried furiously, clenching her fist and starting back. Then she caught herself, looked away, and presently turned, calm, with a light of bitter mockery on her set face. "No! That is one thing I won't do!" She dropped her fist, which had been pressed to her throat, with a short rough gesture of finality, and went directly to her door. "Whether you come to forgive me or not," she said, "if I ever can help you, Dodo, save you from anything, come to me!" And without waiting for an answer, she closed and locked the door. For minute on minute Dodo remained as she had sprung up, her chin in her hand, her knuckles pressed tensely against the sharp contact of her teeth, thinking, hesitating, torn by conflicting impulses. Had Winona dramatized her story, as she herself had done a hundred times? Was it all true, or only half true? If it were true, then what had she sought with Peavey, if not to be his wife--what, then? Only Peavey could tell her, make her certain of the truth or falsity of this story. And yet, there were accents, cries of the soul, despair of the eyes, that were too poignantly felt to be counterfeited! Dodo tiptoed to the door, listening. From the other side came the regular tread of a pacing step, regular and nervous; but of weeping no sound! She remained still a moment, her hand pressed to her breast, irresistibly drawn to belief. Had Winona opened the door at the moment, she would have caught her in her arms. Then she remembered Lindaberry, staring into the horror of the night--into the long wakeful darkness; and she said to herself, as she departed hurriedly: "To-morrow I will go to her. It can not be a lie!"