She said to her: “Since every one knows now that I never touched the pocket book, it’s all right, Becky. Don’t try to talk any more. Lie quiet so that you will soon be better.”
But Rebecca shook her head.
“First I had to have your forgiveness,” she said. “Now I must see Martin Moreland.”
Mahala turned to Albert Rich. “Step to Mr. Moreland’s private office and ask him to come here,” she said.
Albert Rich assented, but he returned in a minute saying that Mr. Moreland refused to come. The wave of whiteness that swept Rebecca’s face, and the spasm of pain that shook her body, both reacted upon Mahala. She lifted her head.
“Mr. Moreland has no option,” she said steadily. “He is no longer the controlling factor in the life of this town.”
She nodded to the sheriff and to Albert Rich. “Once he worked his will on me without authority. Now it is my turn. Bring him here.”
Forced by a strong man on either side of him, Martin Moreland stood at the feet of Rebecca Sampson. For what seemed an endless time to the tensely silent people waiting in the room, Rebecca’s eyes studied Martin Moreland.
Then she cried to him: “That my soul may pass from this foot-sore body in peace, tell me, Martin Moreland, was I a scarlet woman?”
Up to that time Martin Moreland had refused to look at Rebecca. He had kept his eyes turned toward the doorway, to the ceiling. At that appeal, in spite of his intentions, something in his inner consciousness forced him to meet her look. To Mahala, at that minute, Rebecca was appealingly beautiful. The mass of her waving fair hair had been loosened and spread over the pillow around her in the examination of her injury. The maturity that realization had brought to her face only gave to it greater appeal. No matter how widely she had journeyed, or how inclement the weather, she always had kept her person with the neat daintiness of any fine lady. It seemed to the onlookers that Moreland was moved to some degree of remorse. There seemed to be forced from him, in spite of the effort he was making for self-preservation, the cry: “No! No! You were my wife. The divorce was fraudulent, not the marriage.”