It came, the revulsion, to Madison in a choked sob—­and he stood up.  The day’s work was done—­here.  Here they would go in quiet thankfulness each from the farm to his little cottage, each to his simple, wholesome meal, each to the twilight hours of gentle communion as they talked to one another from their doorways, each to his bed and his rest, tranquil in the love of God and of man.

Madison flung back the dripping hair from his forehead.  Strange, the contrast that, unbidden, came insistently to him now:  The liquid notes of the bell wafted sweetly on the evening breeze; the howling, jangling turmoil of the city slums, of his familiar haunts where, in mad chaos, reigned the hawkers’ cries, the thunder of the elevated trains, the noisome traffic of the street, the raucous clang of trolley bells—­the sweet perfume of the, fields, the smell of trees, of earth, of all of God’s pure things untouched, unsoiled; the stench of Chatham Square, the reek of whiskey spilled with the breath of obscene, filthy lips—­the little village that he could see beyond him, the tiny curls of blue smoke rising like the incense from an altar over the roofs of houses whose doors had no locks, whose windows were not barred, where plain, homely folk, unsullied, lived at peace with God and the world; the closed areaways of the Bowery, the creaking stairs, the dim hallways leading to dens of vileness and iniquity where, safe by bolts from interruption, crime bred its offsprings and vice was hatched.  What did it mean!

And so he stood there for a little space; then presently he started forward again; and presently he reached the village street, walked down its length, greeted from every doorway with hearty, unaffected sincerity, and after a little while he came to the hotel, and to his room—­and there he locked the door.

Helena was straight—­the words were repeating themselves over and over in his brain.  He began to pace up and down the room.  The words seemed to take form and shape in fiery red letters, being scrawled by invisible hands upon the walls—­Helena was straight.  Straight with Thornton, straight with any man—­straight with her Maker.  He knew that now—­he had read it as a soul-truth in those brave, deep, tear-dimmed eyes.  And he had lost her!  It seemed as though he had become suddenly conscious that he was enduring some agony that was never to know an end, that from now on must be with him always.  He had lost her—­lost Helena.

From his pocket he drew out his keys and opened his trunks, and took out the trays and spread them about.  There were very many trays, they nested one upon the other—­and they were exceedingly ingenious trays—­false-bottomed every one.  And now he opened these false-bottoms, every one of them, and stood and looked at them.  The surest, safest, biggest game he had ever played, the game that had known no single hitch, the game that had brought no whispering breath of suspicion flung its tribute in his face.  Money that he had never tried to count, notes of all denominations, large and small, glutted the receptacles—­jewels in necklaces, in rings, in pendants, in brooches, in bracelets, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, winked at him and scintillated and glowed and were afire.