Morning came like a change in an interminable delirium. Light poured in through the open window, and the smothering heat of the night gave way to the burning heat of the day. Helen sat up on the tumbled bed, pressing her palms against her forehead, and tried to think.
The realization of her own position did not rouse any emotion. Her mind stated the situation baldly and she looked at it with impersonal detachment. It seemed a curious fact that she should be in a hotel in the oil fields, without money, with no way of getting food, with no means of leaving the place, owing bills that she could not pay.
"Odd I'm not more excited," she said, and in the same instant forgot about it.
The thought of Bert did not hurt her any more, either. She felt it as a blow on a spot numbed by an anesthetic. But slowly, out of the chaos in her brain, there emerged one thought. She must do something to help him.
She did not need to tell herself that he had not meant to break the law; she knew that. She understood that he had meant to cover the check, that he was in danger because of some accident or miscalculation. In the saner daylight the succession of events that had led to this monstrous catastrophe became clear to her. Bert's over-wrought self-confidence when he brought her the gold, his feverish insistence that this was a good territory for land sales, his excitement when he rushed away, believing that he could sell a farm to that shifty-eyed woman with the hat-box, should have told her the situation.
Just because Bert had made that tiny mistake in judgment—A frenzy of protest rose in Helen, beating itself against the inexorable fact. It could not be true! It could not be true that so small an incident had brought such calamity. It was a nightmare. She would not believe it.
"O Bert! It isn't true! It isn't—it isn't—O Bert!" She stopped that in harsh self-contempt. It was true "Get up and face it, you coward, you coward!"
She made herself rise, bathed her face and shoulders with cool water. The mirror showed her dull eyes and a mass of frowsy hair stuck through with hairpins. She took out the pins and began tugging at the snarls with a comb. Everything had become unreal; the solid walls about her, the voices coming up from the street below, impalpable things; she herself was least real of all, a shadow moving among shadows. But she must go on; she must do something.
Money. Bert needed money. It was the only thing that stood between him and unthinkable horrors of suffering and disgrace. His father would not help him. Her people could not. Somehow she must get money, a great deal of money.
She did not think out the idea; it was suddenly there in her mind. It was a chance, the only one. She stood at the window, looking out over the low roofs of Coalinga to the sand hills covered with derricks. There was money there. "Millions of dollars a year." She would take Bert's vacant place, sell the farm he had failed to sell, save him.