“Trapped, trapped, trapped, by your own mad temper, trapped!”

At length, unable to bear it any longer, the now empty street offering no distraction, she undressed and went to bed, hoping for relief in sleep.  But sleep would not be wooed.  She tossed from side to side, always hearing those maddening words: 

“Trapped, trapped, trapped, by your own mad temper, trapped!”

All sorts of impractical schemes tormented her feverish brain.  She would appeal to the manager of the place.  She was a woman.  She would understand.  She would do any work, anything, for her bare keep.  Take care of the rooms, wait on table, anything.  Then the thought came to her of how Gertie would gloat to hear—­and she would be sure to do so, things always got out—­that she was now doing her old work.  No, she could not bear that.

Perhaps, if she started out very early, she could get a position in some shop.  There must be plenty of shops in a place the size of Winnipeg.  But what would she say when asked what experience she had had?  No; that, too, seemed hopeless.

As a last resort, she thought of throwing herself on Taylor’s mercy.  She would explain to him that she had been mad with anger; that she hadn’t in the least realized what she was doing; that her only thought had been to defy Gertie in the hour of her triumph.  Surely no man since the days of the cave-men would prize an unwilling wife.  She would humbly confess that she had used him and beg his pardon, if necessary, on her knees.

But what if he refused to release her from her promise?  And what if he did release her?  What then?  There still remained the unsolvable problem of what she was to do.  Her brother had told her that positions in Winnipeg during the winter months were impossible to get.  Gertie had taunted her with the same fact.  She had less than six dollars in the world.  After she had paid her bill she would have little more than four.  It was hopeless.

“Trapped, trapped, trapped, by your own mad temper, trapped!”

And then more plans; each one kindling fresh hope in her heart only to have it extinguished, like a torch thrown into a pool, when they proved, on analysis, each to be more impracticable than its predecessor.  And then, the refrain.  And then, more plans.

It was a haggard and weary-looking bride that presented herself to the expectant bridegroom the next morning.  The great circles under her eyes told the story of a sleepless night.  But nothing in Taylor’s manner betrayed that he noticed that she was looking otherwise than as usual.

While she was dressing, Nora had come to a final decision.  Quite calmly and unemotionally she would explain the situation to him.  She would point out the impossibility, the absurdity even, of keeping an agreement entered into, by one of the parties at least, in hot blood, and thoroughly repented of, on later and saner reflection.  In the remote event of this unanswerable argument failing to move him, she would appeal to his honor as a man not to hold her, a woman, to so unfair a bargain.  She had even prepared the well-balanced sentences with which she would begin.