She knew he was giving her a chance to evade explanations, but the woman had reached a point where she scorned further subterfuge. When one faces Eternity all else shrivels to insignificance. "I was not dizzy," she replied in a dull monotone. Then turning on him passionately, she cried, "Why did you come? Do you know Donnie is going away from me? In three days more my boy will be taken out of my life and given to strangers who care nothing for him? Why should we go on struggling? I am tired of it all!"
In a flash he understood her purpose, and knew the horses had not escaped accidentally.
"And you thought that you could keep him with you—down there?" Powell asked in a voice unsteady with emotion.
She looked at him defiantly. "Yes, you may call it a crime; but I am willing to bear the punishment if there is another world—if there is another world! It is a worse crime to take a child from its mother and give it to the father—no matter how unworthy he may be! I have borne everything for the boy's sake; I could go on—bearing everything the rest of my life—if I could only keep my boy!"
Her voice dropped. Powell saw that her hands and limbs were shaken with tremors. "I love him enough to give him up with a smile, if I could know that it was for his good. My only happiness lies in knowing I have done the best I could for him."
He silently waited the reaction that must come. Her hands covered her face; then a terrible sob shook her body. It was not the sharp cry of remorse; but the terrible soul-rending cry of a heart that is near to breaking, and the man beside her ached to take her in his arms and comfort her as he would a child.
"Tell me about it," he said at last, and she raised her tear-stained face.
Without reservation, she told the story of the long, bitter struggle to reform her husband; the hope that the child would bring compensation and finally the letter and her husband's decision which had driven her to desperation.
"Yet, when it came to the point, you never would have been cowardly enough to take your life and Donnie's," he asserted.
"I don't know," she faltered. "A swimmer who struggles against the tide reaches a moment when further efforts are impossible. I have struggled, prayed and fought until I am tired of it all. I want to stop thinking, stop fearing the future—and sleep. It is sometimes easier to die than to keep on living. Life is too hard, too bitter, too hopeless! You can't understand."