So she slowly detached one Treasury note—it was for one thousand dollars—from the bulky roll, and the rest she restored to its wallet. It was a contribution to conscience. As she replaced that wallet in the inner pocket of the prostrate man, her feelings were akin to those of some primordial worshipper before his primordial Baal or his exacting Juggernaut. She felt that with that sacrifice she was appeasing her gods. She consoled herself with the thought that the Master of Destiny would know and understand—that she had given up the great thing that she might not sorrow in the little. As yet, He would not expect too much of her! That minute fraction of what she might have taken, she argued with herself, appeasingly,—surely that little moiety of what they had fought and worked for might be theirs. * * * * * It was fifteen minutes later that a frightened and pale-faced woman left word at the corner drugstore that an old gentleman was ill of morphine poisoning, and asked if the ambulance might be sent for. All that the clerk could remember, when he was later questioned by the somewhat bewildered police, was that she had seemed weak and sick, and had asked for some aromatic spirits of ammonia, and that the side of her face was swollen and bruised where she lifted her veil. He was of the opinion, too, that she had been under the drug herself, or had been drinking heavily, for she walked unsteadily, and he had had to call a taxi for her and help her into it. What made him believe this, on second thoughts, was the fact that she had flung herself back in her seat and said, “Thank God, oh, thank God!” half a dozen times to herself. CHAPTER XXXII Neither Frances nor Durkin seemed to care to come on deck until the bell by the forward gangway had rung for the last time, and the officer from the bridge had given his last warning of: “All visitors ashore!” Then, as the last line was cast off, and the great vessel wore slowly out from the crowded pier, a-flutter with hands and handkerchiefs, the two happy travelers came up from their cabin. While the liner was swinging round in midstream, and the good-byes and the cheering died down in the distance, the two stood side by side at the rail, watching the City, as the mist-crowned, serrated line of the lower town sky-scrapers drifted past them. The shrouded morning sun was already high in the East, and through the lifting fog they could see the River and the widening Bay, glistening and flashing in the muffled light. Frances took it as a good omen, and pointed it out, with a flutter of laughing wistfulness, to her husband. Behind them, she took pains to show him, the churned water lay all yellow and turgid and draped in fog. “I hope it holds good,” he said, linking his arm in hers.