"Good-by, John," she mechanically returned, and the door was shut between them.
She stood listening until she heard him leave the house. Then, after carefully fastening the burglar chain, she staggered to her chamber, where, falling face downward upon her bed, she collapsed in violent hysterics.
"Oh, if it were only a horrible dream from which I could wake!" she moaned. "It cannot—cannot be possible that I have seen him again, and in such a miserable plight!"
How would it all end? she wondered, as she lay there in abject misery. Would the shameful past, which she had believed forever annihilated, by the death of Marie Duncan and the destruction of those menacing newspapers and photographs, be resurrected, and the fair fabric of social prestige, almost of celebrity, which she had reared for herself and her child during the last ten years be ruthlessly overthrown, and crush them both to earth beneath the ruins?
She had firmly believed for many years that she would never again meet the faithless man who had once been her husband. She had fondly imagined that she was absolutely free to live out the beautiful future she had grown to anticipate without once having her peace disturbed by any fear that he would ever cross her path again. But, alas, for the frailty of human hopes! To be sure, he had told her that he would never trouble her again, and there had been a hopeless finality in both his manner and words when he left her to-night, that seemed convincing. But would he keep his word? Would he—oh, would he?
And to what depths he had fallen!
Could that homeless, penniless, pitiful tramp be the once light-hearted, care-free John Hungerford? The man who had been her husband, and in whose companionship she had once believed herself to be supremely happy! And now—she cringed with shame and repugnance at the mere remembrance of his presence.
How could he ever have sunk so low? Ah, she knew but too well! He had always depended upon some one else to make life easy for him, to help him over hard places, to care for his comfort, and cater to his entertainment; while he gathered only the honey along the way, shirking every manly duty, ignoring every sacred responsibility; and when his props, one by one, had fallen away from him, he had drifted aimlessly and helplessly with the current, sinking lower and lower, until, ill, hungry, and desperate, he had—as a last shameless resort—turned to her, his divorced wife, for help.
Helen spent a wretched night. To sleep was impossible, with that gaunt figure, haggard face, and racking cough continually haunting her. Again and again she wished that she had given John twenty, instead of ten, dollars. How was he ever to get to California with any degree of comfort upon so small a sum? He certainly could not take a sleeper; he would have to ride all the way in a day coach, or go hungry—unless, perchance, his uncle had also sent him a ticket for a berth, which was doubtful. And what would become of him upon reaching San Francisco? He did not look fit for work, and she knew well, from past experience, that Nathan Young was not likely to tolerate laggards in his employ.
What possible hope could the future hold for him—sick, spiritless, and with not a friend in the world to really care what became of him? She shivered as a vision of the home for the poor arose before her. Would he be driven to that? Or, something even worse, perhaps—the coward's refuge—suicide?