She saw James move forward. She saw the bloodless, horror-stricken face of the prisoner. She saw him stumble as he attempted to move away. There was no escape.
James moved forward with body crouching, and strides that covered the intervening space with almost feline stealth.
He came right up to the man, his gun leading. She heard a report and one dreadful cry of terror and pain. She saw Conroy crumple and fall writhing upon the ground. She saw the blood streaming from his stomach. Then the further horror came to her staring eyes as she saw James stand over his victim and fire shot after shot into the hideous, writhing heap.
But the limit was reached. With one wild scream she turned away and flung herself upon her bed; and the next moment everything mercifully became a blank to her.
That was on the Sunday morning. She saw nothing of what followed. She knew nothing until she awoke some two hours later to the haunting vision of the scene she had witnessed. And ever since it had clung to her––clung like an obsession, a mental parasite sapping her nerve, her very reason. Nor had she power to disassociate herself from it.
And now she was waiting in an agony of mind for the murderer’s return. Not only was she waiting for his return, but she expected to see him bearing in his arms one of her own innocent children. The thought of little Vada in his arms drove her frantic. Her innocent little Vada in the arms of this cold-blooded assassin!
She knew him now for all he was. The scales had fallen from her foolish eyes. All the romance of his hideous calling had passed in a flash, and she saw it as it was. She had no words to express her feelings of horror and revolting. In her weakness and wickedness she had torn herself out of the life of a good man to fling herself upon the bosom of this black-hearted villain. She loathed him; she loathed his very name. But more than all else she loathed herself. Her punishment was terrible. She was so helpless, so powerless. She knew it, and the knowledge paralyzed her thought. What could she do? She knew she was watched, and any move to get away would be at once frustrated. She could do nothing––nothing.
No longer able to remain in her room, she had come out to breathe air which she vainly hoped was less contaminated with the crimes of the man whose home she had elected to share. But inside or out it made no difference. The haunting was not of the place. It was in her mind; it had enveloped her whole consciousness.
But through it all there was one longing, one yearning for all that she had lost, all she had wantonly thrown away. Suffering Creek, with its poverty-stricken home on the dumps, suggested paradise to her now. She yearned as only a mother can yearn for the warm caresses of her children. She longed for the honest love of the little man whom, in the days of her arrogant womanhood, she had so mercilessly despised. All his patient kindliness came back to her now. All his tremendous, if misdirected, effort on her behalf, his never-failing loyalty and courage, were things which to her, in her misery, were the most blessed of all blessings. She wanted home––home. And in that one bitter cry of her heart was expressed the awakening of her real womanhood.
But it had come too late––too late. There was no home now for her but the home of this man. There was no husband for her, only the illicit love of this man. Her children––she could only obtain them by a theft. And as this last thought came to her she remembered who it was who must commit the theft.