left for him in her tired, loyal, betrayed heart. He was at last
a thing to be despised, even by her. She despised him.

She sent the car down the slope and across the moonless valley
with small regard for her own or her companion's safety. It swerved
from side to side, skidded and leaped with terrifying suddenness,
but held its way as straight as the bird that flies, driven by a
steady hand and a mind that had no thought for peril. A sober man
at her side would have been afraid; this man swayed mildly to and
fro and chuckled with drunken glee.

Her bitter thoughts were not of the dead man back there, but of the
live years that she was to bury with him: years that would never
pass beyond her ken, that would never die. He had loved her in his
wild, ruthless way. He had left her times without number in the
years gone by, but he had always come back, gaily unchastened, to
remould the love that waited with dog-like fidelity for the touch
of his cunning hand. But he had taken his last flight. He would
not come back again. It was all over. Once too often he had tried
his reckless wings. She would not have to forgive him again.
Uppermost in her mind was the curiously restful thought that his
troubles were over, and with them her own. A hand less forgiving
than hers had struck him dead.

Somehow, she envied the woman to whom that hand belonged. It had
been her divine right to kill, and yet another took it from her.

Back there at the inn she had said to the astonished sheriff:

"Poor thing, if she can escape punishment for this, let it be so.