" she said. "I had to come to see if
it was so."

"What is it, Queenie? What do you mean? What do you want?" he
answered. "What's the trouble?"

"Nothing," she said. "I don't want nothing I can git--I
guess--unless--Oh, _is_ it her, Van? Is it sure all over with me?"

"Look here," he said, not unkindly, "you've always been mistaken,
Queenie. I told you at the time--that time in Arizona--I'd have done
what I did for an Indian squaw--for any woman in the world. Why
couldn't you let it go at that?"

"You know why I couldn't," she answered with a certain intensity of
utterance that gave him a species of chill. "After what you done--like
the only real friend I ever had--I belonged to you--and couldn't even
take myself away."

"But I didn't want anyone to belong to me, Queenie. You know that. I
could barely support my clothes."

Her eyes burned with a strange luminosity. Her utterance was eager.

"But you want somebody to belong to you now? Ain't that what's the
matter with you now?"

He did not answer directly.

"I didn't think it was in you, Queenie, to follow me around and play
the spy. I've liked you pretty well--but--I couldn't like this."

She stared at him helplessly, as an animal might have looked.

"I couldn't help it," she murmured, repressing some terrible emotion of
despair. "I won't never trouble you no more."

She turned around and went away, walking uncertainly, as if from
physical weakness and the blindness of pain.

Van felt himself inordinately wrung--felt it a cruelty not to run and
overtake her--give her some measure of comfort. There was nothing he
could do that would not be misunderstood. Moreover, he had no adequate
idea of what was in her mind--or in her homeless heart. He had known
her always as a butterfly; he could not take her tragically now.

"Poor girl," he said as he watched her vanishing from sight, "if only
she had ever had a show!"

He looked back at Mrs. Dick's. Bostwick had ousted him after all,
before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertain
whether Beth were angry or not--before he could bid her good-by.

Now that the cool of evening was upon him, along with the chill of
sober reflection, he feared for what he had done. He was as mad, as
crude as Queenie. Yet his fear of Beth's opinion was a sign that he
loved her as a woman should be loved, sacredly, and with a certain awe,
although he made no such analysis, and took no credit to