purity that held her up to gaze upon herself in ghastly, terrifying
mockery.

It stupified her, bewildered her, frightened her. She seemed, for days
and weeks now, to be drifting with a current that, eddying, swirling,
swept her this way and that. How wonderful it was, this life she was now
leading compared with the old life--so full of the better things, the
better emotions, the better thoughts that she had never known before!
How monstrous in its irony that she was leading it to _steal_, that she
might play her part in a criminal scheme for a criminal end! And yet,
somehow, it did not all seem sham, this part she played--and that very
thought, too, frightened her. Why was it now that Madison's
oft-attempted, and as oft-repulsed, kiss upon her lips was something
from which she shrank and battled back, no longer from a sense of pique
or to bring him to his knees, but because something new within her,
intangible, that she did not understand, rose up against it! Why did she
do this--she, who had known the depths, who had known no other guide or
mentor than the turbulent, passionate love she had yielded him and in
her abandonment had once found contentment! Was her love for him gone?
Or, if it was not that--what was it?

What was it? A week, another, two more, a month had slipped away since
Thornton had returned, and there had been so much of genuineness crowded
into this sham part of hers that it seemed at times the part itself was
genuine. She had come to love that little room of hers, love it for its
dear simplicity, the white muslin curtains, the rag mat, the patch-quilt
on the bed; those daily duties of a woman, that she had never done
before, that she had at first looked at askance, brought now a sense of
keen, housewifely pride; the gentle patience of the Patriarch, his love
for her, his simple trust in her had found a quick and instant response