Imogene had covered her face with her hands during his terrible denunciation and was weeping softly.  She knew it was true.  She knew that Ruth had gone out of her life, for such baseness as her one-time friend had shown was not to be forgiven.

“You’re right—­I can’t go on here longer,” she sobbed.  “I’m sick, I’m really sick.  I’ve been barely crawling about for the last two days.  And she knew it and left me!  Oh, Ruth, Ruth!”

“And would have left you, storm or no storm, and whether I came or not!  In order to be alone with Gretzinger!” Her heart-breaking sobs went on.  “Don’t weep, Imogene.  Put her out of your mind.”  He gently placed an arm about her shoulders.  “Come, I will take you to Louise.”

That she had been “crawling about the last two days” was apparent when she attempted to rise.  Her strength suddenly vanished, her knees gave way.  Bryant secured her coat and cap, wrapped her in blankets from the bed, and carried her out to the car.  Then he put out her lamp and locked the door.

And that turning of the lock, Lee felt, terminated a painful chapter of his life.

CHAPTER XXVII

As by the girls’ cabins, so before the Graham house, Lee perceived a motor car.  He brought his own machine to a stop near it and cut off his engine.  At the same instant the door opened in the house, where by the light shining through the portal he saw Louise’s and Charlie Menocal’s figures.  Menocal stepped forth.

“You will please go now,” Louise was saying.  “When you telephoned I told you then that I shouldn’t go with you, or go to the dance at all.”

Bryant had alighted and was arranging the blankets about Imogene.  Charlie’s voice spoke, rather truculently: 

“I told you I was coming for you, didn’t I?  Now see what a position that leaves me in!  People think you’re coming.  I promised to bring you.”

“Then you were too presumptuous,” Louise said.  “Now go.  You’re only making a bad matter worse.”

“See here, Louise——­”

“You had my refusal and I’ve repeated it a dozen times,” she interrupted, indignantly.  “Must I shut the door in your face to silence you?  And here’s another car.  Have some regard for my personal feelings, sir.”

Lee by now had lifted Imogene into his arms and started toward the speakers.

“Be a good sport, Louise,” Menocal pursued, in a tone intended to be wheedling.  “Run upstairs and put on a party dress while I wait for you.  You don’t understand how much I want you to come along to this dance.”  His words were a little thick and stumbling.

“Hush!  Don’t you see someone has come?  You’ve been drinking; and you’re sickening to me.”

“I don’t care if someone is there!  Let ’em hear, Louise.  Let all the world hear, let your father hear, let anybody hear!  Because I love you, and so you must come to the dance.”  Suddenly his tone changed to an angry hiss.  “You’ve been treating me like a cur, refusing to see me or go with me, and not letting me come here.  I came to-night!  I’ve stood for enough from you; you can’t play me for a fool any longer.  And you’re going to marry me, too.”