The sense of tragedy merged into the maddening thought of the injustice of it. It was monstrous. It was a tyranny for which there was no justification, and it goaded her to the verge of hysteria. Whatever she did now the hand of fate would move on irrevocably fulfilling its purpose to the bitter end. She knew it. In spite of all Buck's confidence, all his efforts to save his friend, the disaster would be accomplished, and her lover would be lost to her in the vortex of her evil destiny.
Fool--fool that she had been. Wicked even, yes, wicked, that she had not foreseen whither her new life was drifting. It was for her to have anticipated the shoals of trouble in the tide of Buck's strong young life. It was for her to have prevented the mingling of their lives. It was for her to have shut him out of her thoughts and denied him access to the heart that beat so warmly for him. She had been weak, so weak. On every count she had failed to prove the strength she had believed herself to possess. It was a heart-breaking thought.
But she loved. It would have been impossible to have denied her love. She would not have denied it if she could. Her rebellion against her fate now carried her further. She had the right to love this man. She had the right which belongs to every woman in the world. And he desired her love. He desired it above all things in the world--and he had no fear.
Then the strangeness of it. With all that had gone before she had had no misgivings until the moment he had poured out all the strength of his great love into her yearning ears. She had not recognized the danger besetting them. She had not paused to ask a question of herself, to think of the possibilities. She loved him, and the thought of his love thrilled her even now amidst all her despair. But the moment his words of love had been spoken, even with the first wonderful thrill of joy had come the reality of awakening. Then--then it was that the evil of her fate had unmasked itself and showed its hideous features, leering, mocking, in the memory of what had gone before, taunting her for her weakly efforts to escape the doom marked out for her.
All this she thought of in her black moments. All this and far, far more than could ever take shape in words. And her terror of what was to come became unspeakable. But through it all one thing, one gleam of hope obtruded itself. It was not a tangible hope. It was not even a hope that could have found expression. It was merely a picture that ever confronted her, even when darkness seemed most nearly to overwhelm her.