But her charge had set her face like a flint against returning. Rebellious and desperate thoughts were working in the young girl's mind. Why should she return to America? That was the question that tortured her night and day. She had resolved to die rather than live with her husband, and in a few more weeks the end of the year would come. A dreadful existence stretched before her--the price she must pay for this year of luxury--this year that might have been almost happy but for the madness of love that had come so suddenly and so irresistibly into her life. "Oh, Dorian, Dorian, I loved you but to lose you--yet I cannot live without you--so I will end my life and its sorrows," she sobbed in the sleepless silence of the night. In her short, eventful life she had had few chances to make real friends, and she had no kins-people except old Meg Dineheart, who had declared herself on that first night at Pirate Beach to be her grandmother. For this reason Nita had protected her from arrest for her crimes, but she shuddered and grew heart-sick at the thought of sustaining any relationship to the wicked old hag, and often longed for a mother's love. "I am alone in the world, with no right to love and happiness like other girls, and surely God will forgive me for ending my wretched life," she sobbed, and began to plan the way in which to end "life's fitful fever." Mrs. Courtney thought it a strange whim when, instead of attending the opera one evening, Nita went to church. She knew afterward the meaning of the fancy she had combated all in vain. Nita went to church to pray and ask God's pardon for the wicked deed she was about to commit. She smiled in mournful mockery when her worldly-minded chaperon tried to argue her out of going. "Dear Mrs. Courtney, I can take my maid; I need not deprive you of the pleasure," she said sadly. "But as for me, I do not care for music to-night. I would rather hear some godly words and prayers." "It is time enough for piety when you are old and gray," the woman said cynically, and Nita gave her a strange, sad glance. "What if I do not live to grow old--if I die in my early youth?" she queried. Mrs. Courtney shrugged her shoulders without replying; but after Nita had gone out, she said significantly to Azalea. "I think she is suffering from a temporary aberration of the mind. You have noticed how quiet, almost morose, she has been lately. I shall take her home to her guardian without delay. There must be something wrong with her mind, the way she has carried on since she married Dorian." But Nita had her way and went to church, and if ever a tortured soul, about to launch itself into eternity, prayed earnestly for the pity and pardon of Heaven, she did that night. And the next morning Mrs. Courtney had a shock that she never forgot till her dying day. Nita's maid came rushing into her room with a pallid face and staring eyes.