“This comes of locks and bars!” he sneered, recalling Doris’s expression, “but, damn it all, unless you were more fool than most girls you might have saved yourself.”

To this Meredith made no reply, but she crouched on the couch and gathered her knees in her arms as if clinging to the only support at her disposal.

“See here!” Thornton bent forward and his eyes blazed.  “I’m going to give you a last chance.  You’ll come with me to-morrow and have done with this infernal rot or I’ll take the woman with me who has made life possible, in the past, for you and me.  What do you say?”

Horror and repulsion grew in Meredith’s eyes.  She went deadly white and stretched her hands wide as if shielding herself from something defiling.

“Go!” she gasped.  “Go with her!  By so doing I will not have to explain; I will be free to return—­to Doris.”

“So!” And now Thornton got up and paced the floor; “having foresworn every duty you owe me, having driven me to what you choose to call wrong, you pack your nice, clean little soul in your bag and go back to pose as—­as—­what in God’s name will you pose as?  You!”

Meredith shrank back.  She was conscious now of her danger.

“Well, then!” Thornton came close and laughed down upon the shrinking form—­her terror further roused the brute in him; all that was decent and fine in him—­and both were there—­fell into darkness; “you’ll pay, by heaven! before you go.  You’ll—­”

“Leave me alone!” Meredith sprang to her feet.  “How dare you?”

And again Thornton laughed.

“Dare?  You—­you little idiot!  You’ll come with me to-morrow—­by God!”

* * * * *

But Meredith did not go with Thornton on the morrow, and if the other took her place she did not seek to know.

The weeks and months dragged on and she was thankful for time to think and plot.  It took so much time for one who had never acted before.  And then—­she knew the worst!

Thornton might return at any time and soon—­her child would be born!  First terror, then a growing calmness, possessed Meredith.  She forgot Thornton in her planning, forgot her own misery and sense of wrong.  She did not hate her child as she might have—­she learned in the end to consider it as the one opportunity left to her of saving whatever was good in her and Thornton.  She clung to that good, she was just, at last, to Thornton as well as herself.  Both he and she were victims of ignorance—­the little coming child must be saved from that ignorance; the father’s and—­yes, her own, for Meredith was convinced that she would not live through her ordeal.

Thornton must not have the child—­he was unfit for that sacred duty of giving it the chance that had been denied the parents.  The new life must have its roots in cleaner and purer soil.  Doris must save it.  Doris!

Then Meredith wrote three notes.  One was to Sister Angela: