“He’ll despise me,” she muttered. “He’ll think I am weak like all the rest, but I am not. _I am not!_ I’ll show him that he can’t—and yet”—her head sank to her hands, which were folded on the top of the bureau—“I couldn’t help it. My God, I couldn’t help it! I must have wanted—no, I didn’t. I didn’t!” There was a soft step in the hall. The door of her room creaked like the low scream of a cat. A figure in white stood on the threshold. It was Mrs. Porter in her nightdress, her feet bare, her iron-gray half-twisted hair hanging upon her shoulders. “I couldn’t go to sleep, Cynthia,” she said, “till I knew you were safe at home.” “Well, I’m here all right, mother; so go back to bed, and don’t catch your death of cold.” The old woman moved across the room to Cynthia’s bed and sat down on it. “I heard you coming down the road and went to the front window. I had sent Brother Hillhouse for you, but it was Nelson Floyd who brought you home. Didn’t Brother Hillhouse get there before you left?” “Yes, but I had already promised Mr. Floyd.” The old woman met her daughter’s glance steadily. “I suppose all I’ll do or say won’t amount to anything. Cynthia, you know what I’m afraid of.” Cynthia stood straight, her face set and white, her great dreamy eyes flashing. “Yes, and that’s the insult of it, mother. I tell you, you will drive me too far. A girl at a certain time of her life wants a mother’s love and sympathy; she doesn’t want threats, fears and disgraceful suspicions.” Mrs. Porter covered her face with her bony hands and groaned aloud. “You are confessing,” she said, “that you are tied an’ bound to him by the heart, and that there isn’t anything left for you but the crumbs he lets fall from his profligate table.” “Stop!” Cynthia sprang to her mother and laid her small hand heavily on the thin shoulder. “Stop! You know you are telling a deliberate—” She paused, turned and went slowly back to the bureau. “God forgive me! God help me remember my duty to you as my mother. You’re old; you’re out of your head!”