THE PATRIOT'S HEART The inside of Paulina's house was a wreck.

The remains of benches and chairs and tables mingled with fragments of vessels of different sorts strewn upon the filth-littered floor, the windows broken, the door between the outer and inner rooms torn from its hinges, all this debris, together with the battered, bruised and bloody human shapes lying amidst their filth, gave eloquent testimony to the tempestuous character of the proceedings of the previous night.
The scene that greeted Paulina's eyes in the early grey of the morning might well have struck a stouter heart than hers with dismay; for her house had the look of having been swept by a tornado, and Paulina's heart was anything but stout that morning.
The sudden appearance of her husband had at first stricken her with horrible fear, the fear of death; but this fear had passed into a more dreadful horror, that of repudiation.
Seven years ago, when Michael Kalmar had condescended to make her his wife, her whole soul had gone forth to him in a passion of adoring love that had invested him in a halo of glory.

He became her god thenceforth to worship and to serve.

Her infidelity meant no diminution of this passion.

Withdrawn from her husband's influence, left without any sign of his existence for two years or more, subjected to the machinations of the subtle and unscrupulous Rosenblatt, the soul in her had died, the animal had lived and triumphed.