Her father and mother grew incandescent with the strain between the obstacle and the opportunity--the irresistible opportunity chained to the immovable obstacle. They raged against the fiend who had ruined Kedzie's life, met her on her pathway, gagged and bound her, and haled her to his lair. Poor young Gilfoyle would have been flattered at the importance they gave him, but he would not have recognized himself or Kedzie. According to his memory, he had married Kedzie because she was a pitiful, heartbroken waif who had lost her job and thrown herself on his mercy. He had married her because he adored her and he wanted to protect her and love her under the hallowing shelter of matrimony. He had given her his money and his love and his toil, and they had not interested her. She had berated him, chucked him, taken up with a fast millionaire; and when he returned to resume his place in her heart she had greeted him with her finger-nails. Thus, as usual in wars, each side had bitter grievances which the other could neither acknowledge nor understand. Gilfoyle was as bitter against Kedzie as she was against him. And even while the three Thropps were wondering how they could summon this vanquished monster out of the vasty deep of Chicago they could have found him by putting their heads out of the window and shouting his name. He was loitering opposite in the areaway of an empty residence. He did not know that Kedzie's father and mother were with her, any more than they knew that he was with them. CHAPTER XXXIV After a deal of vain abuse of Gilfoyle for abducting their child and thwarting her golden opportunity, Adna asked at last, “What does Mr. Dyckman think of all this?” “You don't suppose I've told him I was married, do you?” Kedzie stormed. “Do I look as loony as all that?” “Oh!” said Adna. “Why, he doesn't even know my name is Thropp, to say nothing of Thropp-hyphen-Gilfoyle.” “Oh!” said Adna. “Who does he think you are?” asked Mrs. Thropp. “Anita Adair, the famous favorite of the screen,” said Kedzie, rather advertisingly. “Hadn't you better tell him?” Adna ventured. “I don't dast. He'd never speak to me again. He'd run like a rabbit if he thought I was a grass widow.” Mrs. Thropp remonstrated: “I don't believe he'd ever give you up. He must love you a heap if he wants to marry you.” “That's so,” said Kedzie. “He's always begging me to name the day. But I don't know what he'd think if I was to tell him I'd been lying to him all this time. He thinks I'm an innocent little girl. I just haven't got the face to tell him I'm an old married woman with a mislaid husband.” “You mean to give him up, then?” Mrs. Thropp sighed. Adna raged back: “Give up a billion-dollar man for a fool poet? Not on your tintype!” Kedzie gave her father an admiring look. They were getting on sympathetic ground. They understood each other.