She drew a long breath, and went on.

“In the first place, I didn’t go to San Francisco with Dicky Graham, although I’m glad if my little trick made you think so for awhile.  I didn’t go anywhere with him except into a cafe for a few minutes, the day he left New York.  It was just after he got back from Marvin, and he was pouring drinks into himself so fast that he was pretty hazy about what had happened, but I made a pretty shrewd guess as to his trouble.”

She turned to me, and I saw with amazement that contempt for me was written on her face.

“You!” she snarled, “with your innocent face, and your high and mighty airs, you must have been up to something pretty disgraceful, to have your husband feel the way he did that day he started for San Francisco!  He had to go out to Marvin unexpectedly that morning, almost as soon as he had arrived in the city.  What or who he found there, you know best.”

“Stop!” said Lillian authoritatively, and for a long minute the two women faced each other, Grace Draper defiant, Lillian, with all the compelling, almost hypnotic power that is hers when she chooses to exercise it.

The accusation which the girl had hurled at me stunned me as effectually as an actual missile from her hand would have done.  What did she mean?  And then, before my dazed brain could work itself back through the mazes of memory, there came the whir of a taxi in the street, an imperative ring of the bell, a tramp of masculine footsteps in the hall, and then—­my husband’s arms were around me, his lips murmuring disjointed, incoherent sentences against my cheek.

“Madge!  Madge! little sweetheart!—­no right to ask forgiveness—­deserve to lose you forever for my doubt of you—­been through a thousand hells since I left—­”

Over Dicky’s shoulder I saw Jack’s dear face smiling tenderly, triumphantly, at me, realized that he must have started after Dicky as soon as he had heard my story of my husband’s inexplicable departure—­and the light for which I had been groping suddenly illuminated Grace Draper’s words.

“So you saw my father embrace me that day!” I exclaimed, and at the words the face of the girl who had caused me so much suffering grew whiter, if possible, and she sank into a chair, as if unable to stand.

“Yes.”  A wave of shamed color swept my husband’s face, his words were low and hurried.  “But you must believe this one thing,—­I had made up my mind to come back and beg your forgiveness, indeed, I was just ready to start for New York, when your cousin found me and brought me the true explanation of things.

“I—­I—­couldn’t stand it any longer without you, Madge.  I must have been mad to go away like that.  You won’t shut me out altogether, will you, sweetheart?”

I had thought that if Dicky ever came back me I should make him suffer a little of what he had compelled me to endure.  But, as I looked from the white, drawn face of the girl, who I was sure still counted Dicky’s love as a stake for which no wager was too high, to the anxious faces of the dear friends who had helped to bring him back to me, I could do nothing but yield myself rapturously to the clasp of my husband’s arms.