And the more she thought of it, the more she dreaded it, teased and mocked by the very irony of the situation, disquieted and humiliated at the memory of her own pleadings for honesty while she herself was so far astray from the paths she was pointing out.
That sacrifice of scrupulosity on the altar of expediency, trivial as it was, was the heritage of her past life, she told herself.

And she felt, vaguely, that in some form or another it would be paid for, and dearly paid for, as she had paid for everything.
It was only as they steamed into the harbor of Trieste, in the teeth of a _bora_ and a high-running sea, that this woman who longed to be altogether honest allowed herself any fleeting moment of self-pity.
For as she gazed up at the bald and sterile hills behind that clean and wind-swept Austrian city, she remembered they had been thus denuded that their timbers might make a foundation for Venice.

She felt, in that passing mood, that her own life had been denuded, that all its softening and shrouding beauties had been cut out and carried away, that from now on she was to be torn by winds and scorched by open suns--while the best of her slept submerged, beyond the reach of her unhappy hands.
But Durkin, at her side, through the driving spray and rain, pointed out to her the huge rolling bulk and the red funnels of the Cunarder.
"Thank heaven!" he said, with a sigh of relief, "we'll be in time to catch her!" The _Laminian_ dropped anchor to the windward of the liner, and as dusk settled down over the harbor Frank took a wordless pleasure in studying the shadowy hulk which was to carry her back to America, to her old life and her old associations.

But she was wondering how she should tell him of the loss of the Penfield securities.

It was true that the very crimes that should have bound them together were keeping them apart! Suddenly she ran to the companionway and called down to her husband.
"Look!" she said, under her breath, as he came to the rail, "they're talking with their wireless!" She pointed to the masthead of the Cunarder, where, through the twilight, she could "spell" the spark, signal by signal and letter by letter, as the current broke from the head of the installation wires to the hollow metal mast, from which ran the taut-strung wires connecting, in turn, with the operating office just aft and above the engine-rooms.
"Listen," she said, for in the lull of the wind they could hear the short, crisp spit of the spark as it spelt out its mysterious messages.
Durkin caught her arm, and listened, intently, watching the little appearing and disappearing green spark, spelling off the words with narrowing eyes.
"They're talking with the station up on the mainland.