NORAH’S action was so sudden, so totally unexpected, that Jim Spedwick was overwhelmed with a sense of irreparable disaster. He could not follow her, he could not call her back. The very light of his life seemed to have gone out, leaving him in darkness. He was crushed. What was there to live for now? The stars in their courses seemed to fight against him. He was like one who had wandered in a maze; he could see no way out of the tangle of things with which he was beset. Nor could he reason clearly in that crisis of his fate. His brain seemed numbed, and yet he endured a mental agony which no words could describe.
Presently a fiery impulse came upon him to rush to the house, to thunder at the door, to demand admittance, to bear Norah off in spite of all resistance. But the thought no soon
