She knew him now for all he was. The scales had fallen from her foolish eyes. All the romance of his hideous calling had passed in a flash, and she saw it as it was. She had no words to express her feelings of horror and revolting. In her weakness and wickedness she had torn herself out of the life of a good man to fling herself upon the bosom of this black-hearted villain. She loathed him; she loathed his very name. But more than all else she loathed herself. Her punishment was terrible. She was so helpless, so powerless. She knew it, and the knowledge paralyzed her thought. What could she do? She knew she was watched, and any move to get away would be at once frustrated. She could do nothing--nothing. No longer able to remain in her room, she had come out to breathe air which she vainly hoped was less contaminated with the crimes of the man whose home she had elected to share. But inside or out it made no difference. The haunting was not of the place. It was in her mind; it had enveloped her whole consciousness. But through it all there was one longing, one yearning for all that she had lost, all she had wantonly thrown away. Suffering Creek, with its poverty-stricken home on the dumps, suggested paradise to her now. She yearned as only a mother can yearn for the warm caresses of her children. She longed for the honest love of the little man whom, in the days of her arrogant womanhood, she had so mercilessly despised. All his patient kindliness came back to her now. All his tremendous, if misdirected, effort on her behalf, his never-failing loyalty and courage, were things which to her, in her misery, were the most blessed of all blessings. She wanted home--home. And in that one bitter cry of her heart was expressed the awakening of her real womanhood. But it had come too late--too late. There was no home now for her but the home of this man. There was no husband for her, only the illicit love of this man. Her children--she could only obtain them by a theft. And as this last thought came to her she remembered who it was who must commit the theft. The thought brought a fresh terror. How would he accomplish his end? Had not Scipio tacitly refused to yield up her children? Then how--how? She shivered. She knew the means James would readily, probably only too gladly, adopt. Her husband, the little harmless man who had always loved her, would be swept aside like anyone else who stood in the way. James would shoot him down as he had shot Conroy down; even, she fancied, he would shoot him down for the wanton amusement of destroying his life.