“Oh, I don’t know! There are some words I hate,—the words free-love and adultery. I don’t want to be exploited in the newspapers, and I don’t want to be insulted by my landlord. After all, expediency is the source of all morality. My life with you would be a thousand times better than it was with Beverly Peele; but I suspect that we can’t violate certain moral laws that heredity has made part of our brain fibre, without ultimate regret, even when we keep the world in ignorance. I suffered horribly once, although I had not defied the conventions. But I think we must have everything, or the large share of herself that Nature has given each of us rebels,—in other words, the ideal is not complete.”
“When you are very much in love,” he said dryly, “you won’t analyse.”
Contrary to her habit, she remained in the wood for some time after he left her. Suddenly she was aroused from her reverie by a peculiar heavy sound, as of a man crawling. She listened intently, her hair stiffening: the house was a quarter of a mile away. The sound continued steadily. She sprang to her feet and fled from the wood. As she ran up the hill beyond, she glanced fearfully over her shoulder. A man shot from the lower edge of the wood and ran toward the stables.
XVII
An hour after midnight Patience ran into Honora’s room and shook her violently.
“Honora! Honora!” she cried, “something is the matter with Beverly. I can’t wake him up.”
Honora stretched herself languidly. Her eyelids fluttered a moment, then lifted. She said sleepily:
“What is it, Patience?”
“Beverly! Go to him—quick—while I wake up Mr. and Mrs. Peele, and send for the doctor. He dropped his own morphine to-night, and he must have taken too much.”
A few moments later there was an alarmed group of people at Beverly Peele’s bedside, and the butler could be heard at the telephone demanding the doctor.