"Claims?" Thornton laughed, and the sound had a dangerous note that startled Meredith. "Claims? Good Lord! That's quaintly delicious. You don't know men, my dear. It would be a deed of charity to--inform you. Claims, indeed! You drove me, when you might have held me, and you talk claims." "I did not want to hold you--after I knew that you had never really been mine." Meredith's words were shaken by an emotion beyond Thornton's comprehension; they further aroused the brute in him. "This comes of locks and bars!" he sneered, recalling Doris's expression, "but, damn it all, unless you were more fool than most girls you might have saved yourself." To this Meredith made no reply, but she crouched on the couch and gathered her knees in her arms as if clinging to the only support at her disposal. "See here!" Thornton bent forward and his eyes blazed. "I'm going to give you a last chance. You'll come with me to-morrow and have done with this infernal rot or I'll take the woman with me who has made life possible, in the past, for you and me. What do you say?" Horror and repulsion grew in Meredith's eyes. She went deadly white and stretched her hands wide as if shielding herself from something defiling. "Go!" she gasped. "Go with her! By so doing I will not have to explain; I will be free to return--to Doris." "So!" And now Thornton got up and paced the floor; "having foresworn every duty you owe me, having driven me to what you choose to call wrong, you pack your nice, clean little soul in your bag and go back to pose as--as--what in God's name will you pose as? You!" Meredith shrank back. She was conscious now of her danger. "Well, then!" Thornton came close and laughed down upon the shrinking form--her terror further roused the brute in him; all that was decent and fine in him--and both were there--fell into darkness; "you'll pay, by heaven! before you go. You'll--" "Leave me alone!" Meredith sprang to her feet. "How dare you?" And again Thornton laughed. "Dare? You--you little idiot! You'll come with me to-morrow--by God!" * * * * * But Meredith did not go with Thornton on the morrow, and if the other took her place she did not seek to know. The weeks and months dragged on and she was thankful for time to think and plot. It took so much time for one who had never acted before. And then--she knew the worst!