used on the threshold, to glance down the hall
first, and then back to Allie. Her smile was beautiful. She closed the
door and locked it. Allie heard the soft swish of silk dying away.

26

Beauty Stanton threw a cloak over her bare shoulders and, hurriedly
leaving the house by the side entrance, she stood a moment, breathless
and excited, in the dark and windy street.

She had no idea why she halted there, for she wanted to run. But the
instant she got out into the cool night air a check came to action and
thought. Strange sensations poured in upon her--the darkness, lonesome
and weird; the wailing wind with its weight of dust; the roar of
Benton's main thoroughfare; and the low, strange murmur, neither musical
nor mirthful, behind her, from that huge hall she called her home.
Stranger even than these emotions were the swelling and aching of her
heart, the glow and quiver of her flesh, thrill on thrill, deep, like
bursting pages of joy never before experienced, the physical sense of a
touch, inexplicable in its power.

On her bare breast a place seemed to flush and throb and glow. "Ah!"
murmured Beauty Stanton. "That girl laid her face here--over my
heart! What was I to do?" she murmured. "Oh yes--to find her
sweetheart--Neale!" Then she set off rapidly, but if she had possessed
wings or the speed of the wind she could not have kept pace with her
thoughts.

She turned the corner of the main street and glided among the hurrying
throng. Men stood in groups, talking excitedly. She gathered that there
had been fights. More than once she was addressed familiarly, but
she did not hear what was said. The wide street seemed strange, dark,
dismal, the lights yellow and flaring, the wind burdened, the dark tide
of humanity raw, wild animal, unstable. Above the lights and the throngs
hovered a shadow--not the mantle of night nor the dark desert sky.

Her steps took familiar ground, yet she seemed not to know this Benton.

"Once I was like Allie Lee!" she whispered. "Not so many years ago."

And the dark tide of men, the hurry and din, the wind and dust, the
flickering lights, all retreated spectral--like to the background of
a mind returned to youth, hope, love, home. She saw herself at
eighteen--yes, Beauty Stanton even then, possessed of a beauty that was
her ruin; at school, the favorite of a host of boys and girls; at home,
where the stately oaks were hung with silver moss and the old
Colonial house rang with s