She stood swaying a little, her hands still tightly clenched, breathing through half parted lips in short, quick, jerky inhalations like dry sobs.

“It’s true,” she faltered suddenly—­and suddenly buried her face in her hands.  And then she looked up again, and the brown eyes in their depths held an anger and a shame.  “It’s true—­I was—­was—­what you say.  But now”—­her voice hurried on, an eagerness, a strange earnestness in it—­“you must believe me—­you must.  I’ll make you—­I must make you.”

“Oh, don’t hurt yourself trying to do it!” jeered Madison.  “We’re talking plain now.  I’m not taking into account how you feel about it —­don’t you fool yourself for a minute.  The sanctity of my home hasn’t been ruined—­because it couldn’t be!  Get that?  Thornton don’t get you—­not for keeps!  But you and he don’t make a monkey of me again.  Do you understand—­say, do you get that?  You’re mine—­whether you like it or not—­whether you’d rather have Thornton or not.  But I’ll fix you both for this—­I’m no angel with a cherub’s smile!  I’ll take it out of Thornton till the laugh he’s got now fades to a fare-thee-well; and I’ll put you where there aren’t any strings tying me up the way there are here.  Do you understand!” His voice rose suddenly, and for a moment he seemed to lose all control of himself as he reached for her and caught her shoulder.  “I love you,” he flashed out between his teeth.  “I love you—­that’s what’s the matter with me!  And you know that—­you know you’ve got me there—­and you’d play the fool with me, would you!” He dropped his hands—­and laughed a short, savage bark—­and stepped back and stared at her.

“Will you listen?”—­she was twisting her hands, her head was drooped, the long lashes veiled her eyes, her lips were quivering.  “Will you listen?” she said again, fighting to steady her voice.  “It was an accident.”

“I saw the machine when you drove up—­it was a wreck!” snapped Madison sarcastically.

“We ran out of gasoline,” she said quietly.

And then Madison laughed—­fiercely—­in his derision.

“Oh, keep on!” he rasped.  “I told you I was only a blind fool that you could put anything over on!  That accounts for it, of course—­a breakdown isn’t so easy to get away with.  Gasoline!”

“We were miles from anywhere,” she went on.  “We had taken what we thought was a short cut.  Mr. Thornton built a shelter for me in the woods, and went to—­to—­”

He caught up her hesitation like a flash.

“Fake the lines, Helena, if you haven’t had enough rehearsals,” he suggested ironically.  “Anything goes—­with me.”

And now a tinge of color came to Helena’s cheeks, and the brown eyes raised, and flashed, and dropped.

“He went to try and find help,” she said.  “He was out all night in the storm.  I do not know how far he must have walked.  I know the nearest house was five or six miles away—­and there was no horse there—­the man had driven to some town that morning.  It was almost daylight before Mr. Thornton at last came back with a team.  We were forty miles from here—­we sent the team to the nearest town for gasoline and then motored back.”  She stopped—­and then, with a catch in her voice:  “He—­he was very good to me.”