to steal, that she might play her part in a criminal scheme for a criminal end!  And yet, somehow, it did not all seem sham, this part she played—­and that very thought, too, frightened her.  Why was it now that Madison’s oft-attempted, and as oft-repulsed, kiss upon her lips was something from which she shrank and battled back, no longer from a sense of pique or to bring him to his knees, but because something new within her, intangible, that she did not understand, rose up against it!  Why did she do this—­she, who had known the depths, who had known no other guide or mentor than the turbulent, passionate love she had yielded him and in her abandonment had once found contentment!  Was her love for him gone?  Or, if it was not that—­what was it?

What was it?  A week, another, two more, a month had slipped away since Thornton had returned, and there had been so much of genuineness crowded into this sham part of hers that it seemed at times the part itself was genuine.  She had come to love that little room of hers, love it for its dear simplicity, the white muslin curtains, the rag mat, the patch-quilt on the bed; those daily duties of a woman, that she had never done before, that she had at first looked at askance, brought now a sense of keen, housewifely pride; the gentle patience of the Patriarch, his love for her, his simple trust in her had found a quick and instant response in her own heart, and daily her affection for him had grown; and there was Thornton—­this man beside her, whose companionship somehow she seemed to crave for, who, in his grave, quiet manliness, seemed a sort of inspiration to her, who seemed in a curious way to appease a new hunger that had come to her for association, for contact with better thoughts and better ideals.

What was it?  Environment?  Yes; there must be something in that.  It was having its effect even on Pale Face Harry and the Flopper.  What was it that Harry, a surprisingly lusty farmhand now, had said to her a week or so ago:  “Say, Helena, do you ever feel that while you was trying to kid the crowd about this living on the square, you was kind of getting kidded yourself?  I dunno!  I ain’t coughed for a month—­honest.  But it ain’t only that.  Say—­I dunno!  Do you ever feel that way?”

Yes; there must be something in environment.  The old life had never brought her thoughts such as these, thoughts that had been with her now almost since the first day she had come to Needley—­this disquiet, this self-questioning, these sudden floods of condemnatory confusion; and, mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad, half-premonitory awakening, a vague pronouncement that innately it might be true that she was not what she really was—­but what all those around her held her to be—­what Mrs. Thornton had said she was—­and—­

Her fingers closed with a quick, fierce pressure on the arm-rest of her seat—­and she shifted her position with a sudden, involuntary movement.