The girl felt as if a chilly breeze blew over her. She did not answer for a moment. She was wondering in an awed way if Tony were right. Was that the reason Garth had let her go so easily, to answer Zélie's note in person? But no. He had only just reminded her the moment before how he'd never intended giving her up to Severance. Still—when she thought of it—what was there to go back for, unless she intended to stay married to Garth—to be married to him as other women were married to their husbands?
She had never contemplated that, even at the times—and there had been times—when she'd admired Garth, admired him with a secret thrill. Besides, no matter how much Garth had wanted her, in the first throes of his infatuation, he didn't want her now—for good. Oh, such an end to the play wasn't to be dreamed of, from whichever side you looked at it!
"If I go away anywhere from Vision House, it will be to my mother," she said at last.
"Yes, of course. That's where I'm going to take you. We'll go to-night. There's a train we——"
"I can't possibly go with you!" she cried. "Don't you see, to do that would cause the very scandal we've all sacrificed so much to prevent?"
"I do see," said Tony. "But you said yourself to-day that 'everything had changed.' We don't need to be afraid of scandal any more. It can't hurt us now. It will do us good. Marise, I've been thinking things over, and I believe that the only way we can get that brute to free you is by deliberately making a scandal. All the trouble comes from your throwing yourself at the fellow's head in such a hurry. If you'd waited, Œnone dying when she did would have made your marriage useless. You and I would both have been free——"
"We were both free before you decided you'd have to marry Œnone," broke in Marise.
"That was different. I was in debt and hadn't a penny to play with. I couldn't live on you. Now my debts are paid, and though they've not left me a very rich man, I've got something to go on with——"
"You have, because Jack Garth won't take your money."
"Oh, wouldn't he, if he could get it?"