Soon, however, came the impulse to seek the refuge of
her own room and think of what must be done. She stepped lightly to
the outer door; there was no sound in the corridor, and with all the
composure she could assume she passed quietly out and gained her own
apartment unobserved.
CHAPTER XXX
THE STRONG MAN UNMANNED
Madge locked her doors, bathed her hot face, then paced her room in
great agitation, feeling that not only her own happiness was in peril,
but Graydon's also. Her mental distress was greatly enhanced by a
feeling that in order to save her relatives she herself had been
guilty of what to her sensitive nature appeared almost like a crime.
"Was it right?" she asked herself again and again, and at last reached
the conclusion that the fealty she owed to her relatives and to the
man she loved justified her course--that she should shield them even
at such cost to herself. "It was not curiosity that kept me passive,"
she thought, "but the hope, the chance to save Henry from financial
ruin and Graydon from far worse disaster." It would indeed be
"horrible" for any true man to marry such a girl; and to permit the
man she loved to make such a fatal blunder was simply monstrous.
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