PART II

I

Two weeks later Ora and Ida sailed from Havre. Gregory had cabled, and

the _Herald_ had published a dramatic account, of the wounding of Mr.

Mark Blake in the tunnel of his wife’s mine. The engineers’ lease had

expired and he had closed down the mine temporarily. The sinking of

the inclined shaft in the “Apex” had proceeded very slowly owing to

the uncommon hardness of the rock; it would seem that Nature herself

had taken a hand in the great fight and enlisted for once on the side

of the weaker power. Although when Osborne and Douglas had turned over

the mine, their cross-cut almost had reached the point on the vein

which the new shaft expected to strike, Gregory had risen twice in the

night and walked along the hill beyond his boundary, reasonably sure

that all the blasting was not in the shaft, his keen ear detecting

muffled reverberations slightly to the east and at a greater depth. He

communicated his suspicions to Mark, and on the following night they

examined the lock on the Primo shaft house and discovered that it had

been tampered with. They went down by way of the ladder; and in the

cross-cut on the chalcopyrite vein they found miners working with hand

drills. There was a desperate hand-to-hand fight with the manager and

shift boss; the miners, who were bohunks, proceeding phlegmatically

with their work.

The four men had wrestled out into the station at the foot of the

shaft, where they had drawn their “guns”; each had been wounded, but

only Mark seriously. He had received a ball in the lung and another

in the leg. The night was bitterly cold and it was some time before

Gregory and the two antagonists could get him to the surface. He had

insisted upon being taken to a hospital in Butte; and, between loss of

blood, shock, and pneumonia, his condition was precarious.

The girls, who had left Monte Carlo two days after Valdobia’s sudden

departure, received the news in Paris, where they were replenishing

their wardrobes. Ora, torn with remorse, and terrified with vague and

tragic visions of the future, was in a distracted condition; but Ida,

although she sincerely lamented the possible demise of her old friend,

did not lose her head. She gave final and minute orders to tailors and

dressmakers, instructed them to send the trousseaux in bond directly to

Great Falls, Montana, devoted a morning to the selection of hats both

for herself and her friend, and packed all the trunks. Mowbray, always

willing to be useful, bought their tickets and escorted them to Havre.

Ida thanked him with something like real warmth as they parted at the

head of the gangplank, and promised him the “time of his life” when he

came to Montana in the summer.

“Now, buck up,” she said, smiling into his disconsolate face; “you know

I’m not flirting with you. We’re the best of pals. I’ll be glad to see

you, all right, and perhaps I’ll find a nice little heiress for you.”

“Oh, don’t!” Mowbray tried to arrange his features for the benefit of

the passersby. “You know I’m fond of you no end. Why----”

“Get along now. That’s the last whistle. Good-bye, and write me nice

gossippy letters. It’s only a few months, anyhow.”

Mowbray walked down the gangplank with his head in the air, and, as he

turned on the dock to lift his hat, Ida noticed that his face, whose

charm was its boyish gayety, looked suddenly older, and almost as

determined as Valdobia’s.

“Oh, Lord!” she thought, as she turned away, “men! They’re as alike as

lead pencils in a box. But I guess I can manage him.”

Ora stayed in bed for two days; reaction left her physically exhausted

and she slept most of the time. On the third day Ida peremptorily

dressed her and took her on deck. A wireless from Gregory, announcing

that Mark was holding his own, further revived her, and before they

reached New York another wireless was still more reassuring. A few

years before, when the ores of Butte Hill were roasted in the open

and the poisonous fumes were often as thick as the worst of London

fogs, pneumonia ran its course in twenty-four hours to the grave, but

in these days the patient had a fighting chance despite the altitude.

The Butte doctors were experts in pneumonia, so many of the careless

miners were afflicted, and Mark not only had a sound constitution but

never had been a heavy drinker. There was every reason to expect him to

pull through, as Ida assured her friend whenever they were alone; but

she managed to meet several agreeable people, and kept herself and Ora

companioned by them throughout the voyage.

Valdobia was still in Rome; his mother was dying. He had written daily

to Ora and she had read and reread his letters. They said neither too

much nor too little; but he was one of life’s artists and he managed

to pervade them with an atmosphere that was both sweet and disturbing.

His telegram, when he had read the news of her husband’s misadventure

in the newspapers, was a masterpiece. If he was unable to grieve over

the possibility of Mr. Blake’s abrupt removal from a scene where he was

the one superfluous actor, too well-bred to betray his relief, and too

little of a hypocrite to be verbose in condolence, his attitude was

so finely impersonal, and it was so obvious that he knew exactly how

she felt, that Ora liked him more than ever if only for rousing her

stricken sense of humour.

She had thrust his letters and telegrams into the depths of her steamer

trunk, but after she had made up her mind that Mark would recover (her

lively imagination picturing him hobbling among the orange groves of

Southern California while she guided his footsteps and diverted his

mind), she retrieved the correspondence and read it every night when

alone in her stateroom. Valdobia’s devotion not only gave her courage,

but his strong imposing personality stood with a haughty and confident

menace between herself and Gregory Compton. She refused to think on her

future, beyond the long convalescence of her husband, but had it not

been for her meeting with Valdobia and her deliberate installment of

his image on the throne of her adventurous imagination, she doubted if

she would have had the courage to return to Montana. As it was there

were moments when the poignant mental life she had led with Gregory

Compton reached a long finger from the depths to which it had been

consigned and sketched his image in her mind as vividly as if he stood

before her; while her whole being ached with longing and despair. But

her will was strong; she banished him summarily and reinstated the

Roman who was so like and so unlike the man compounded of the old world

and the new in the mortar of the Northwest.

Ida, with an unexpected delicacy, refrained from curiosity, and

although she had too much tact to avoid all mention of Valdobia, only

alluded to him casually. She left Europe out of the conversation as

much as possible, and amused Ora, when they were alone, with the

plans of her campaign in Butte. When they reached quarantine Ora was

horrified to find herself surrounded by reporters. The Paris _Herald_

had published the story of her mine as well as her picture and Ida’s,

but they hardly had been sensible of their notoriety until, on the

steamer, they were among Americans once more. It was manifest that they

were “big news” in their own country, and Ora fled to her stateroom,

leaving Ida to face the reporters alone.

Ida was undaunted; moreover she was quick to seize her first

opportunity to dazzle Butte. She made herself amiable and interesting

to the young men, her natural cunning steering her mid-stream, in this

her first interview: an ordeal in which most novices are wrecked on

the tropic or the arctic shore. She thanked them as warmly for their

news that Mr. Blake had left that morning with his doctors and nurses

in a private car for Southern California, and expected his wife to

go directly to Los Angeles, as if Ora had not received a wireless to

that effect an hour before; she modestly told them something of her

social experiences abroad, answered the inevitable questions regarding

suffrage, excused Ora, “who was naturally upset”, and expatiated upon

her happiness in returning to live in Butte. They thought this odd, but

were so delighted with her mixture of dignity and naïveté that they

rushed to their respective desks and told the world that the wife of

Gregory Compton had been the guest of princes and was the handsomest

woman in America.

Ora was almost gay at the prospect of going directly to California,

although she was obliged to make the journey alone. It was early in

the afternoon when they landed. Ida established Ora in the first

Overland Limited that left the Grand Central Station, and returned to

the Waldorf-Astoria, where she had engaged rooms for a month. She had

no intention of returning to Butte ignorant of New York. Westerners

of wealth, old and recent, visited New York casually several times

a year; and not to know it, even with Europe to her credit, stamped

a woman with the newness of the new-rich who wore all their jewels

all the time. Ida had seen many women make fools of themselves and

had no intention of leaving any penetrable spaces in her armour. She

spent every morning in the shops, or in the establishments of the

exclusive dressmakers, tailors and milliners that were patronized by

the fashionable women of Butte and Helena, giving them liberal orders.

She saw all the new plays, heard the more famous of the opera singers,

and even attended three symphony concerts. She drove in the Park every

afternoon or joined the throngs on Fifth Avenue; and she took tea or

lunch in the different hotels and restaurants devoted to fashion.

Sometimes she sat in the gangways of her own famous hostellerie,

recalling with a tolerant smile her early crude ambitions--had

they died less than a year ago?--to trail her feathers up and down

Peacock Alley. She wore one of her severest tailored suits upon these

occasions, and maintained an air of stately detachment that somewhat

counteracted the always startling beauty of her face and figure. No man

took his courage in his hand.

One afternoon she sat longer than usual, for she had set her teeth that

day and walked through the Metropolitan Museum. She fell to musing,

and with a more sustained introspection than was her habit, upon the

changes that had taken place within herself during the past year;

wondering “how deep they had struck”, if she really were as altered as

she must appear even to the raking eye of Butte; or if she merely had

developed her native characteristics while polishing her surface and

furnishing her mind.

She also endeavoured to analyse her attitude toward returning to her

husband, but gave this up, although puzzled that it was not more

obvious. But her mind was clear on one point. If Gregory desired her

society he must spend his week-ends in Butte; nothing would induce her

to return to the De Smet ranch. She had not even a spasm of curiosity

to see the famous Perch of the Devil Mine.

II

Ida was not given to imaginative excursions, but during the three

days’ journey from New York to Butte, she made no acquaintances,

resting in the seclusion of her drawing-room; and after she had read

all the magazines her mind began to people itself. Although the ladies

of Butte, whom she now regarded as equals, moved along the central

highway, Gregory was always turning the corners, and she visualised

him most frequently advancing hurriedly toward the station as the

train entered--both late, of course. She rehearsed the meeting many

times, never without a pricking sense of awkwardness, for she now

fully realised that when a woman and her husband have not communicated

save on the wire for nearly a year, the first interview is liable

to constraint. He always had been difficult to talk to. Would he be

bored if she tried to entertain him as Ora would entertain Mark: with

such excerpts of their many experiences as a confiding husband might

appreciate? She never had understood him. Out of her greater knowledge

of the world and men should she be better able to fathom the reserves

of that strange silent nature--or did she really care whether she could

or not? Although she had made up her mind to greet him at the station

with the warmth of an old friend, and flatter him with her delight in

returning home, she had not the faintest idea how she should carry off

the long evening--if the train were on time.

It was not. Probably no Northwestern train has arrived on time in

the history of the three railroads. Ida’s train, due at seven in

the evening, arrived at midnight. Her Pullman was at the end of the

long dark platform, and as she walked slowly toward the station

building--which looked like the bunk-house of an abandoned mining camp

in the desert--searching for someone to carry her hand baggage--porters

being non-existent in the Northwest--she saw neither Gregory nor

any other familiar face. For the first time in her life she felt a

disposition to cry. But as she tossed her head higher and set her

lips, a young man approached and asked if she were Mrs. Gregory

Compton. He was a pleasant looking youth, and she was so grateful to be

called by name that she forgot her new reserve and replied emphatically

that she was.

“I am your chauffeur,” he said. “Your new car arrived a few days ago,

and Mr. Compton ’phoned me to meet you. Have you any hand baggage?”

Ida indicated her portmanteau and hat box in the dark perspective and

went on to inspect her car. It was a handsome limousine, lighted with

electricity, and for a moment she took a childish pleasure in examining

its fittings. But as the man returned and piled her baggage in front

she asked irrepressibly:

“Is Mr. Compton not in Butte?”

“No, ma’am. He hasn’t been in Butte for weeks. Lively times out at the

mine, I guess.”

“And my house? Had I not better go to a hotel?”

“Oh, the house is all right. Mr. Compton’s secretary ’phoned to an

agency, and they put in three or four in help. I guess you’ll find

everything all right.”

Ida entered her car, but scowled at its luxuries. By this time she

was “mad clean through.” “The famous American husband!” she thought,

gritting her teeth. “Best in the world--not. If it’s my horse, my dog,

my wife with an Englishman, it’s business first last and always with an

American. European men are courteous whether they mean it or not, but

Americans only remember to be polite when they have time. Ten months

and he can’t leave his mine long enough to meet me when I arrive at

midnight!”

Her pleasure in returning to Butte had turned as flat as spilt

champagne. She did not even glance at the gay electric signs and

midnight activities of Broadway as her car rolled through that

sleepless thoroughfare toward the West Side. But when her chauffeur,

who had ignored the speed limit, stopped abruptly before a large house

of admirable architecture and blazing with lights, her face flushed

with excitement and she forgot her recalcitrant spouse. The door was

opened at once and two maid servants ran down the steps. They were

young, neatly dressed and capped, and it was evident that their service

was dictated not only by curiosity but by sympathy.

“Welcome home, ma’am,” one of them, a Swede, said shyly as Ida stepped

to the pavement. “It’s too bad your train was so late. The cook’s got a

nice hot supper for you.”

Ida, who was not easily touched, felt as grateful to these smiling

girls as to her friendly chauffeur, and for a moment was tempted to

“come down off her perch” and revel in human companionship. But she

knew that it “wouldn’t work”; she merely thanked them graciously and

ascended the wide steps of her new home, that palatial residence of

cream-colored pressed brick of her unswerving desires. While the maids

were taking her bags and boxes upstairs, she walked through the large

rooms of the lower floor. Everything was in the best modern style of

furnishing, the prevailing tone dim and rich, with Eastern rugs on the

hardwood floors; French tapestries and carved oak furniture and stained

glass in the library--also a few books; paler tapestries set in panels

in the immense drawing-room, and many beautiful pieces of furniture

carefully selected with an eye to both contrast and mating. Out of

this room opened a dining-room that looked like a baronial hall, and

although the Murphys had taken their silverware they had left their

china, imported from Limoges, and their glass ware, made for them by a

Venetian firm that had supplied Ida’s grandes dames for thirty years.

In short it was one of those stately and sumptuous interiors, furnished

by the best houses in New York, which one associates exclusively with

the three or four great cities of the United States, and is always

unwarrantably surprised to find in the newer cities of the West.

Ida made a pretence of eating her dainty supper, remembered that she

was now a grande dame and visited the kitchen to say an appreciative

word to the cook, then ascended to her bedroom divided between anger

and a depression so foreign to her temperament that she barely

recognised it for what it was.

The large upper hall had been fitted up as a billiard room, and with a

continuous divan broken only by the doors of the bedrooms. Ida threw

it an appreciative glance, but it merely emphasised the fact that

there was no man in the house, and she did not linger. Mrs. Murphy,

evidently a brunette, had furnished her bedroom and dressing-room in

primrose yellow and much lace. Ida approved both as unreservedly as

she had the rest of the house, thankful there was nothing to alter;

like many women she had consummate taste in dress and none whatever

for house decoration; although unlike most of these disparate ladies

she was quite aware of her deficiencies. She knew when a room was all

that it should be, but could not have conceived one of the details,

much less the unimpeachable combination. The sex instinct teaches

those subtleties of personal adornment likely to allure the male, and

arrest the anxious eye of other females, but ancestral brain-cells are

necessary for the more civilised accomplishment.

Ida’s eyes fell on the telephone beside her bed and lingered. She

forgot her beautiful room and the successive throbs of gratified

ambition, in an overwhelming desire to call up Gregory and tell him

what she thought of him. But she was a woman in whom calculation

was stronger than impulse, and in the past year she had learned to

control her temper, not only because a carefully nourished refinement

had crowded out some of the weeds of her nature, but because her

ever-growing intelligence despised lack of self-control in all things.

So she merely undressed herself, her eyes wandering every few minutes

to the telephone. It was incredible that he did not ring her up. That,

at least, would take but a few moments of his precious time.

However, she fell asleep immediately after her bath, and it was the

telephone bell that awakened her at eight o’clock. This time she

frowned at it, for she wanted to sleep; but she sat up, put the

receiver to her ear and asked languidly: “Well?”

A strange man’s voice replied: “Is this Mrs. Compton?”

“Yes. Why am I disturbed so early?”

“I’m sorry--this is Mr. Compton’s secretary speaking--but Mr. Compton

told me to call you at eight o’clock. He always comes in for breakfast

at this time--here he is.”

“Hello! How are you? What time did you get in?” Gregory’s voice was

elaborately polite and as eager as any lover’s of yesteryear.

“Are you interested?” Ida’s heart beat thickly, but her tones were

crisp. “I arrived at midnight. Really, I expected you to meet me. That

is generally considered the decent thing to do.”

“Oh! I’m sorry it was impossible. I can’t leave the mine at present.

How did you like the house?”

“I am enchanted with it--and with the limousine. When are you coming

in?”

“I can’t say at present. I dare not leave for a moment. You will find a

deposit to your credit at the Daly bank.”

“Thanks. Would--shall I run out?”

“Better not. There is always danger of rows.”

“But of course I’m wild to see the mine. You forget how famous it is.”

“Better wait awhile. It really isn’t safe.”

“Very well. How’s your wound? Where were you hurt, anyhow?”

“Not worth mentioning, as I cabled you, and I suppose you got my

telegram in New York saying I was all right again. Sure you got

everything you want?”

“I am overwhelmed by all this luxury, and your generosity.”

“Glad you like it. Has Mrs. Blake gone to California?”

“She went directly from the steamer. How is Mark getting on. I’ve had

only notes from Ora.”

“All right. He doesn’t write but has telegraphed once or twice. He’d

better stay below several months. Write Mrs. Blake to persuade him to

take things easy. He had a close call. I can get along without him for

awhile, but I can’t afford to lose him. Will you see to this?”

“I’ll write Ora today. She’s in no hurry to return to Butte--was

delighted at the prospect of going to California, and intends to take

Mark to Santa Barbara, where she knows a lot of people.”

“Ah! Good. Well, I must get some breakfast. Amuse yourself.”

“And you won’t be in for several days?”

“Afraid not. Good-bye.”

Ida set the receiver back on the table, but it was some minutes before

she lay down again. She sat thinking, with compressed lips. Born

with intuitive knowledge of men, she had, as she once remarked to

Ora, turned a goodly number of them inside out during the past year.

Gregory Compton did not intend to live with her again. She knew this

as conclusively as if his kind matter-of-fact tones had expressed the

direct message. Before she left home it never had occurred to Ida to

wonder if her husband still loved her or not, and she had learned to

accept his consuming masculine interest in matters mineralogic as all

in the day’s work. Now she wondered if he had ceased to love her then

or since. That he took no further interest in her as a woman, although

amiably determined to do his duty as her legal provider, would have

been almost patent to an imagination as riotous as Ora’s; to Ida,

practical and clear-sighted, there was not a loophole for delusion.

In a few moments she relaxed the tension of her body and lay down.

“Well!” she thought impatiently, “what’s the matter with me, anyhow?

Isn’t it what I always hopefully looked forward to? Did I ever pretend

to be anything but resigned--or to be in love with him after the first

few weeks? I guess I’m spoiled with too much devotion, that’s what.

Seeing too many men lose their heads. Much their old heads are worth.

But I guess I don’t like being turned down for once. Goose. It’s my lay

to cut out pique and sing a song of thanksgiving that I’ve got pretty

nearly everything I ever romanced about and set my mind on. It’s a

pretty good old world when things come your way, and women’ll never be

happy till they learn to put men in the same place that men put us--on

a handy little side-track. I’ve got a whole parlour car instead of an

upper berth like some poor devils, so I’ll quit whining. But if there’s

another woman in the case, let them both look out--that’s all!”

III

Ida slept for two hours longer and rose in a philosophical mood. As

she more than once had remarked to Ora, “nothing in life is just what

you figured it out beforehand”; and this, one of life’s most unwelcome

lessons, it had not taken her twenty-six years to learn. She had, in

fact, accepted and docketed it while women twice her age were nursing

their illusions.

She had expected to be met at the station not only by her husband but

by Ruby and Pearl, to say nothing of reporters. “She had slunk in like

a nobody,” and her husband declined to feed the fires of her vanity,

blazing so merrily these last ten months. Never mind. She had the

genius of quick readjustment and a sharp eye for the next move in the

great law of compensation.

“And believe me,” she thought, as she put the finishing touches to her

smart morning street costume, and taught the admiring Swede how to pin

on a veil, “the gods have provided the goods pretty liberally, and I

don’t belong to the immortal order of female jackasses. Nine-tenths of

women’s troubles, mental and physical, sprout in that hothouse corner

of their skulls they call imagination. None of it in mine. Let us

eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. Wait till I’m launched in

Butte. And just wait till I give a dinner party to the second son of an

English duke. Tra la la!”

Before the morning was over even philosophy had folded her wings. If

life had been niggardly yesterday she gave with both hands today. When

Ida arrived at the bank she was received with exceeding deference by

the vice-president and informed that he had recently invested two

hundred thousand dollars in her name, acting on instructions from Mr.

Compton; and that as a large part of it was in mortgages the interest

in some cases ran as high as eight per cent. The money had been placed

in his hands for investment shortly after the great land deal, details

of which had reached the public ear in due course and greatly added to

the prestige of Gregory Compton. In fact it had invested his remote

and ambiguous personality with an almost sinister significance. As

Ida listened to the story of this transaction (she barely had opened

a newspaper in New York and knew nothing of it), she found herself

wondering if it could be true that once she had possessed this man of

whom even bankers spoke with bated breath. It was patent that they

stood in awe not only of the rapid and masterly strokes which had

increased his little patrimony by something over two millions in less

than a year, but of his colossal luck, his sensational reputation as a

“winner”, and his open defiance of the greatest of all great trusts.

It seemed to Ida, as she sat in the vice-president’s office listening

to his classification of her husband with Marcus Daly, W. A. Clark,

and F. Augustus Heinze, the three commanding figures heretofore in the

financial history of Montana, and to predictions that Compton would go

farther than any one of his predecessors, that she might have known

Gregory in his extreme youth or in some previous existence; but that

this man who now not only ranked first in the eyes of all Montana,

but had focussed the attention of a continent, no longer touched

her life save as a fairy-godfather. It was the first time that she

had appreciated his fame. She had been absorbed in Europe and its

diversions--and diverters; the new wealth had been accepted as a matter

of course; her imagination had not been powerful enough to visualise at

a distance what her mind grasped the moment the facts were presented to

her in the measured yet glowing terms of a bank’s president.

“He always did feel himself a cut above me,” she thought grimly as she

left the building and walked down Main Street. “And now, I suppose, he

thinks Perch of the Devil is Mount Olympus, and that he is some god.

It would be fun to put a nick or two in his halo--but never mind: I’ve

got a cool two hundred thousand--_and_ a palatial residence, _and_ a

limousine--sounds like a fairy tale. There’s nothing mean about him,

anyhow.”

When she reached her beautiful home she found four reporters awaiting

her. They apologised for not meeting her at the train, but as hour

after hour had passed with discouraging reports, they finally had

gone home to recuperate for the next day’s labours. Ida dismissed the

last of her regrets, and told them all that she wished Butte to know

at once, showed the women the contents of her trunks, which the maids

were unpacking, promised to let them know when the newer Paris wardrobe

arrived, and finally gave them lunch. Reporters are the quickest people

in the world to detect affectations, assumptions, and false values, and

the most merciless in their exposure; but, although these four were on

the alert, they could find neither traces of original commonness nor

imitation of the British aristocracy. Ida apparently had consigned the

slang of her former class to the limbo of careless grammar, and she was

so simple and natural that they failed to discover how clever she was;

they agreed, as they walked down Broadway, that she was merely a marvel

of adaptability, like so many others that had done credit to the great

state of Montana, to say nothing of the fluid West in general.

But, although Ida could be anything she chose when occasion demanded,

she always sought relief from the strain as quickly as possible.

Immediately after the departure of the reporters she telephoned for her

limousine and drove to the large “Block” in the heart of the business

district where Miss Ruby Miller kept the looks of the Butte ladies up

to par. As she left the elevator she saw that the familiar door was

open as usual and the old screen before it. She tapped discreetly, and

Miss Ruby came out into the hall, removing the cold cream from her

hands with her apron.

“Ide!” she cried rapturously, throwing both arms about her friend’s

velvet shoulders. “Glory be, but I’m glad to see you and you do look

fine----”

“How mean of you not to meet me----”

“We had it all fixed and supper here, but gave it up at ten o’clock.

For all we knew you might not get in till morning, and you know how we

work----”

“Well, I’ll forgive you if you both come to dinner with me tonight. I

want to have one good old time before I sit up and play the grande dame

act for weeks on end----”

“I guess you’re one now without any play-acting. You look the real

thing all right. And I guess we won’t see so awful much of you now----”

“Do you mean because I’m harnessed up to a bunch of money----” began

Ida in high indignation.

“Oh, I know you’ll always feel the same, but grand dames and our sort

don’t gee at the same table. The West is democratic but it ain’t too

democratic. Don’t think I’m jealous. You’re just where I’d like to

be myself, and I’m proud that one of us has got to the top so quick.

My! But Mr. Compton’s a wonder. To think that I ever dared call him

Greg--even behind his back. Well, he’ll be just as proud of you as you

are of him. Pearl’ll want to see your hats.”

“She can copy them all. Be sure to come early.”

She felt warmed by the little interview, but as she went down in the

elevator she admitted to herself that her future intercourse with her

old friends must be sporadic, no matter what her loyalty; and she

wondered if her new friends would take their place; or even be to her

the half of what Ora had become in the long intimacy of travel. She

shrugged her handsome shoulders. If you elected to mount in life, you

must pay the toll. Were she abruptly returned to the old cottage in

East Granite Street certainly Ruby and Pearl would not compensate her.

No, not for a moment. You may slip back in life if you are not strong

enough to hold on, but you do not deliberately turn back even for the

friends of your youth. Neither does Progress halt and sit down to wait

for its failures to catch up. Ida leaned back in her limousine and met

the interested eyes of many pedestrians of both sexes as her chauffeur

drove her about for an hour to get the air, and incidentally to be

looked at.

Today she was in a mood to enjoy Butte, and she deliberately summoned

the long anticipated sensations. She revelled in the gaunt grey

ugliness of Anaconda Hill which flung its arrogant head high above the

eastern end of the great hill itself; in the sensation of driving over

miles of subterranean numbered streets, some of them three thousand

feet below, to which that famous mass of rock and dirt and angular

buildings was the portal. She leaned far out of her car to admire the

glittering mountains that looked like blue ice topped with white, and

decided that they were far more original and beautiful than the Alps of

Austria and Switzerland; certainly they tugged at her heartstrings and

at the same time filled her with an unprecedented desire to sing. She

noticed for the first time that the violet foothills against the nearer

mountain east of the city seemed to close the end of the streets as the

Alps did in Innspruck, and gave the ragged overgrown camp clinging to

its high perch in the Rockies a redeeming touch of perfect beauty.

She drove out to Columbia Gardens, bought flowers from the conservatory

for her rooms, and wandered about recalling the many gay times she had

had in the dancing pavilion. But her eye was suddenly arrested by the

steep mountain behind, then dropped slowly to the base. It was there

that she had promised to marry Gregory Compton. She remembered his

young passion and her own. She had never felt anything like it again;

nor had he ever been quite the same. Was it one of those “supreme

moments” novelists so blithely alluded to? The logical inference of

that old bit of bathos was that such moments had no duplicates. She

felt faint and dizzy for a moment; then walked back to her car, smiling

grimly as she realised that she had experienced a fleeting echo of that

vast unattainable desire women live and die cherishing or bewailing.

“Poor things! Poor things!” she thought, with the first pang of pity

her sex had ever inspired. “No wonder they go in for suffrage, art,

work, any old thing. Home,” she added to the chauffeur.

She peremptorily dismissed all thought of the past during the drive

back to town and reverted to her pleasure in once more feeling a part

of her surroundings, hideous though they might, for the most part, be;

instead of walking with alert critical eye through what always must

seem to her the animated pages of ancient history. But her complacency

received a sudden shock. The car was rolling along Park Street when her

eye rested upon a man’s face vaguely familiar. She had bowed graciously

and the face was behind her before she realised that the man was

Professor Whalen, and that, for a second, she had looked into a pair of

pale blue eyes that sent her a swift message of hate.

Ida shuddered. The warm light air of her beloved Rockies turned cold

and heavy. “I feel as if I’d stepped on a snake and just missed getting

bitten,” she thought, putting her sensations into a concrete form,

after her habit. “I had forgotten the little viper was alive, and I

wish to goodness he wasn’t.” She had flouted superstition always, but

she could not shake off the sense of menace and evil that had vibrated

from the man until she was within her own doors once more. Then she

became as oblivious of Whalen’s existence as during that late exotic

period when everything connected with her old life had seemed too crude

to be real.

The parlour maid handed her a note that had arrived an hour before from

Mr. Luning, Mark’s partner. Mrs. Blake, he wrote, had bought a present

for Mrs. Compton in Paris and sent it to the care of her husband’s

firm. Mr. Luning had gone the day before to Great Falls to clear it in

the Custom House, and now had the pleasure of forwarding the boxes, etc.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Ida, “what can it be?”

“There’s four big boxes in the back hall, ma’am.”

Ida lost no time. If Ora had given her a present it must be worth

looking at, and she went as rapidly as dignity would permit to the

nether regions and ordered the boxes opened. The present proved to

be a magnificent silver service, from many dozens of “flat ware” to

massive platters, vegetable dishes, flower, fruit and bon-bon pieces,

and candelabra. The delighted servants made a shining display on

the dining-room table, and after Ida had gloated over it for a time

and informed her audience that it was copied from a royal service

in the Louvre, she went suddenly up to her bedroom. This time she

did shed a few tears, and as she looked at her handkerchief in some

wonder she decided that there was at least one person that she loved,

“hard-headed” as she was, and that Ora Blake had found the one soft

spot in her flinty heart and wormed herself into it. She went to

her desk immediately and wrote Ora a letter that was almost tender,

admitting that she missed her “like fury”, and begging her to return

soon.

“Greg telephoned this morning,” she concluded, oblivious that she was

betraying the fact that she had not seen her husband, “and told me to

tell you to keep Mark down below for several months. But his lungs must

be well by this time or he’d be dead. And the rest of him will mend all

the sooner in this magnificent air. Heavens, but it’s good to breathe

it again! It makes one feel as if the atmosphere of Europe hadn’t been

aired for a century. I’ve got a wonder of a house and a jim dandy of a

limousine, but ever since I came I’ve felt kind of homesick, and I’ve

just realised it’s for you, old girl. So, come home. Once more ten

million thanks.”

And when Ruby and Pearl dined with her that night she realised that all

her old zest in their society was gone. Ida Hook, at least, had “passed

on.”

IV

It was on the morning of this same day that Gregory sat alone in his

cabin uncommonly idle, for he still spent the greater part of his

time underground, when not away on business connected with his new

investments and deals. For the last week he had not left the hill, and

although he was on the alert to hear his geological acumen vindicated,

he was in no mood to find pleasure in his mine. His conscience, an

organ that troubled him little, was restive. In spite of his liberal

disbursements, he knew that he had treated Ida unfairly. He had long

since made up his mind to obliterate her from his personal life, and,

if the truth must be told about a man who had snapped his fingers in

the face of the most formidable combination of capital in the world,

he was afraid to meet his wife. Vanity, he argued, in such women takes

the place of warmth, and he had no mind to burden his memory and

resource with an endless chain of subterfuges; nor had he any relish

for the bald statement that since he could not have the woman he wanted

he would have none; and that his mine, as complex and mysterious,

as provocative of dreams, as capricious and satisfying as woman

herself--to say nothing of hard work and increasing power--was to fill

his life.

Ida might rage, stamp, scream, with her hands on her hips, her superb

eyes flashing. Worse still, she might weep, lamenting that he loved her

no longer--if he made her hurried friendly calls. Far, far worse, he

might succumb to her beauty and superlative femaleness and hate himself

ever after. His was to be a life of unremitting and constructive work;

he must keep that blue flame burning on the altar in his sanctuary. If

he never paused to draw it up into his consciousness he must know it

was there.

Better stay away until she understood all that it was necessary

she should know, wore out her pique in private, and accepted the

situation. But he would have felt better this morning if he had heard

that her train had arrived early in the evening. He might be ruthless,

even where women were concerned, but he was also sensitive and capable

of tenderness.

But he was not thinking of Ida alone. He was listening for the

footsteps of Joshua Mann, and in a few moments he heard them, as

well as the angry growl of his foreman’s voice. Mann entered without

ceremony.

“I’ve been looking for you, sir. We’ve the devil’s own luck again----”

“Apex struck the Primo vein?”

“No, and won’t for fifty feet yet. But--well--I hate to say it--we’ve

lost our vein--cut off as short as if it had been sawed. Of course,

it’s faulted, and God only knows where its dropped to--or how far.

A prettier shoot of ore was never uncovered. What’s worrying me is

that--oh, hell!--just suppose that’s what Amalgamated is sinking on. My

head’s going round. Can I have something?”

Gregory waved his hand toward the cupboard where his visitors found

refreshment. When Mann had braced himself, his employer tapped a large

sheet of paper that lay on the table.

“Come here,” he said. “I made this map some time ago, and calculated

to a day when you would lose the vein. I guessed our vein had faulted

before Amalgamated got busy. But don’t worry. They’re either on a

parallel vein or on a mere fork.” His pencil moved along the vein

already stoped, travelled over the fault line and recovered a vein

further down. “Hundred feet,” he said. “With air drills and unless the

fault breccia is uncommonly hard, which I don’t think is the case, we

should find it in less than three weeks. They can’t get through that

rock for at least a month. Even then they may not touch us, but then

again they may, and we must be there first. Cut across the fault at

once and follow it on the footwall side to the east. Get well into the

footwall. If you don’t recover the vein inside of a hundred feet I’ll

stand to lose a thousand dollars and you’ll be the winner.”

“I guess not,” said Mann admiringly. “But, by jing! I was worried. You

never can tell about them faults. When the old earth split herself up

and got to slipping she not only lost one side of herself sometimes,

but twisted about as if she was having fun with the apex law of Montana

in advance. But I figure out that you’re like old Marcus Daly--you’ve

got a sort of X-ray in your eye that sees the ore winking below. So

long.”

He departed to carry encouragement to the anxious miners, and Gregory

went out and walked along his hill. By this time he knew every inch

of it, and had found indications of ore in his other claims while

superintending the development work necessary before perfecting his

patents. If Amalgamated sank on his present vein and the courts

enjoined him from working it until the matter of apex rights was

settled, he would simply go ahead and sink through the carbonates in

his other claims to those vast deposits of chalcopyrite with which he

was convinced his hill was packed. He knew the geological history of

every mine in Montana, and while he had given up all hope of finding

gold on his estate save in small incidental values, he believed that he

possessed one of the greatest copper deposits in the Rocky Mountains.

And now that even one vein of his hill was threatened, he dismissed his

old dreams with a shrug and transferred his undivided affection to the

exciting treasure the earth had given him. There were few surprises

in gold mines. A great copper mine might make geological history. In

two districts, Butte and Castle Mountain, copper glance, an ore of

secondary enrichment, had been found far down in the sulphide zone

below chalcopyrite, chief of the primary ores. He believed that he

should find glance at depth of nine hundred feet. If there were masses

of it he should take out millions in a year, for chalcopyrite was the

richest of the permanent copper ores of this region, running as high as

79.8.

He had been on amiable terms with the manager and engineer of the Apex

Mine since the battle underground, and he crossed the claim unmolested

to make his daily inspection of the Primo shaft house. But there had

been no further attempt to use the cross-cut, although the Apex people

had managed before they were discovered to drive to the point upon

which they expected to sink.

Gregory walked up the hill beyond to look at the cottage just

completed, which was to be occupied by the manager and foreman of the

Primo Mine as soon as Mark reopened it. He had been about to begin

operations, cutting across the fault Gregory had demonstrated--a fault

parallel to the one in Perch of the Devil--when he was shot nearly to

death.

The cottage was situated in a clearing in the pine woods, somewhat

apart from the cabins, which were being renovated and made comfortable

for the miners. Gregory was so positive that the pyroxenite vein would

be recovered just beyond the row of aspens, some sixty feet below

the tableland, that Mark, who believed his friend to be an inspired

geologist, was preparing for a long period of mining; although if

it had been a quartz mine Gregory, sure as he was of his judgment,

would not have permitted him to put up a mill and concentrating plant

until sufficient ore had been blocked out to warrant the expense. But

pyroxenite went direct to the smelter, and a cottage could always be

rented.

The little bungalow had two bedrooms besides one for a Chinese servant,

a bathroom, and a large living-room with a deep fireplace, a raftered

ceiling, and pine walls stained brown. Gregory, as he realised how

cosy it would be when furnished, wondered that he had been satisfied

with his two-roomed cabin for so long. He had been too absorbed to

think of comfort, but today he felt a desire for something more

nearly resembling a home than a perch. He looked through the windows

at the sibilant pines, the pink carpet of primrose moss, the distant

forests rising to the blue and white mountains; and then he sighed as

he glanced slowly about the long room and pictured it furnished in

warm tones of red and brown, wondering if either of the men would be

married. It would be an ideal home for a honeymoon.

He twitched his shoulders impatiently and went outside. To his surprise

he saw a wagon ascending the hill laden with lumber, the seats occupied

by the contractor and carpenters that had built the bungalow.

“What’s up?” he asked, as the contractor leaped to the ground.

“Another bungalow. Perhaps you could suggest a site. It’s to be near

this, and the same size. We had a telegram from Mr. Blake yesterday.”

“But what does he want of two cottages?”

“Can’t say, sir, unless he means to come out here to get well.”

“That’s nonsense. He knows he could stay at my house on the ranch.”

But Gregory was not in the habit of thinking aloud. After indicating

a site he swung back to his hill, angry and apprehensive. Could it

be possible that Mark intended to spend the summer at the mine and

bring his wife with him? As soon as he reached his cabin he sat down

at his table, and after getting his friend’s present address from

Luning, telephoned a long distance message to Pony to be telegraphed

to Mr. Mark Blake in Santa Barbara. Its gist was that the weather was

abominable and that Mark must not think of anything so foolish as to

bring his weakened heart and lungs to this altitude. His services

would be imperative later when his solicitous friend locked horns with

Amalgamated, and meanwhile he was, for heaven’s sake, to take care of

himself and remain on the coast until he was in a condition to work day

and night.

He received an answer that afternoon.

“No intention of leaving here for two months. Lungs pretty good, but

shall wait for leg to heal. Ora wants present cottage for herself as

she intends to spend summer at mine. Will you be on the lookout for a

manager? He can live in the lessee’s shack until the new cottage is

built. Might begin operations at once. Hope this not too much trouble.

Mark.”

This message was transmitted over the telephone, and, to the excessive

annoyance of the operator, who happened to be the belle of Pony,

Gregory asked her three times, and with no excess of politeness, to

repeat it. The third time he wrote it out and stared at the words as if

the unsteady characters were recombining into a sketch of the infernal

regions.

“Good God!” he thought. “And I can’t get away!”

Was Mark mad? Was she mad? Then he realised the blissful ignorance of

both regarding the drama he so often had swept from the stage of his

mind, that secret dweller in the most secret recesses of his soul.

Doubtless Ora never had thrown him a thought since they parted at her

gate. He remembered her expressed intention to live at her mine when

the lease was up, her desire to adventure underground, her intense

appreciation of the romance of mining. He closed his eyes, his face

relaxed. So long as she cared nothing for him there was no danger; he

might daydream about her a bit. At least--at last!--he should see her

again, talk to her, work with her, help her as no one else could help

her. If the association he would have avoided was inevitable why not

welcome it as a brief oasis in what must be an arid life, so far as

mortal companionship was concerned?

But he was not the man to dream long. Presently he opened his eyes,

set his jaw until it looked a yard long, put on his overalls, and went

underground.

V

Butte long since had made up its mind as to the social future of

Mrs. Gregory Compton. That Ida’s mother had been a laundress and her

father a miner concerned the ladies of Butte as little as many similar

outcroppings of family history peculiar not only to Montana but to all

regions of recent exploitation and rapid growth.

In the hearty welcome extended to the newcomer, with either the

money or the personality to command its attention, Butte more nearly

resembles London than any other city in the world. To pasts she is

indifferent, provided they are not resurrected as models for a present:

she asks no questions of a pretty, amiable, amusing woman who pays

her the compliment of sojourning in her midst, so long as the lady

exercises an equal reticence--assuming reticence to be her virtue--and

plays the social game with _savoir faire_. Distractions on that high

perch are few, social life ebbs oftener than it flows, many of the

large houses are closed for the greater part of the year, and only the

very young, who care not where they are so long as they may dance, find

life in an overgrown mining camp as satisfactory as their elders find

New York.

But the hospitality of Butte is genuine and founded largely upon common

sense. Most of the women composing its society have enjoyed wealth for

many years: they have travelled extensively; and if they continue to

make their homes in Butte it is solely on account of their own business

interests or those of their men. They argue that to deprive themselves

of even the casual diversion, assuming the exclusive airs of large

and resourceful communities, would merely put them on a level with

thousands of other small towns slowly stagnating, be unworthy of their

worldly experience, and of the large free spirit of the Northwest which

has pervaded that isolated camp since they came with their husbands or

fathers to take a hand in its history.

As for Mrs. Gregory Compton all they knew of her in her present

stage of development was favourable, although several had a lively

remembrance of the rosy black-haired Ida Hook delivering her excellent

mother’s laundry work at their back door, and receiving more or less

of her “cheek.” But they had heard, at the time, of her lessons with

Professor Whalen, and of Ora Blake’s coincident interest. Of her social

advantages and triumphs in Europe the press had kept them informed; she

returned to Butte, in fact, as one new-born. Moreover, she now owned

one of the finest houses in the city for entertaining, they knew that

she had elected to shine in Butte rather than in London (that Mecca of

so many quick-rich women without position in their own country); and

above all she was the wife of Gregory Compton, the man in whom Montana

was beginning to feel assured it could take an unequivocal pride, not

only for his diabolical cleverness, but because he was as “straight”

as the Twentieth Century in the United States of America would permit.

Butte felt devoutly grateful to Ida for being and returning, and, with

that utter lack of affectation that characterised it, began calling two

days after her arrival.

Ida would have been glad to have had Ora’s support and advice during

this ordeal--which caused her far more apprehension than ducal

week-ends. But she summoned all her acquired knowledge and tact,

fortified it with her native and supreme confidence in herself, and

made no mistakes. Butte was charmed with the severe rich gowns that set

off her haughty head and warmly colored face and the long, flowing,

yet stately lines of her beautiful figure; charmed also with a manner

that was both simple and dignified. She showed no enthusiasm at being

taken up so promptly, neither did she quite accept it as a matter of

course. If her talk ranged freely over common acquaintance in London,

the Paris dressmakers of the season, the new opera, the plays of the

moment in New York, it was without glibness, and she took a firm hold

on the older and more important women of the community by confiding to

them that she should not make her first venture in the difficult art of

entertaining until her friend Mrs. Blake returned to help her through

the novitiate. Many of the younger women were the wives of Amalgamated

officials and attorneys, or of men in a relationship to that mighty

power but one degree further removed; but the men individually were too

broad-minded to cherish a personal grudge against Compton, and they

were, moreover, quite as eager as their mates to meet his handsome wife.

During the ensuing fortnight Ida dined out every night, went to a

bridge party every afternoon, as well as to several luncheons, teas,

and dances. She wore a different costume every time she appeared in

public; but although there was at the moment nothing in Butte to

compare with her gowns she never produced the effect of outshining the

other women by anything but her beauty and individual style. In short

her success was so immediate and so final that, although she liked

these ladies of her native town even better than she had anticipated,

her rapid conquest soon lost its novelty, and she wished that Ora would

return; not only because she missed her increasingly, but because to

entertain in her great house would give her a new and really poignant

excitement, and lift her definitely from the ranks of the merely

received.

Gregory telephoned every few days, and never twice at the same hour.

When she found herself restlessly awaiting the ring of the instrument,

she dashed out of the house angrily and took a walk. If she found upon

her return that he had called her up, she felt that he had given her

the excuse to telephone to him, and she soon learned at what hours she

could find him either in his cabin or down in the mine, where he had

a booth. She was furious at what she called her raging female vanity,

and if she could have found another man to assuage it she would not

have hesitated to press him into service at whatever cost to himself.

But, as happens more often than not, there was not an unmarried man in

Butte old enough to be worthy of a fastidious woman’s notice. She would

have yawned in the face of “Brownies”, and, although more than one

roving husband would have placed himself at her disposal, she was the

last woman to court scandal or even gossip. She longed for the advent

of Lord John Mowbray, whose gayety would distract her mind, and whose

devotion make her forget that she was a neglected wife. She could throw

dust into the eyes of Butte by pretending to be his matrimonial sponsor.

But for the first time she wished that she had children. The great

house seemed to demand the patter of small feet, the slamming of

doors, a row of naughty faces peering over the banister of the second

floor. It was terribly silent. And yet she had felt settled down in

that house at once, so long had one of its kind been the object of her

unswerving desire; its atmosphere already seemed to hang listless with

ennui. She subscribed to both the state and city suffrage fund, for

she felt a new sympathy for women who were trying to fill their lives,

and sincerely hoped they would invent some game that would make them

independent of men.

Seventeen days after her return she was sitting in the library, trying

to forget her solitary luncheon in a novel when she heard the front

doorbell ring. Her servants were amiable but not too competent, and she

waited impatiently and in vain for one of them to answer the summons.

She restrained the impulse to open the door herself. This was now an

obsolete custom among her new acquaintance; although having the front

door shut in one’s face while the colored maid took one’s card to the

lady of the stately mansion was hardly an improvement, and this had

been her experience a day or two ago. She rang the bell in the library.

Still there was no sign of life from the high-priced young women who

doubtless were gossipping over the back fence. Ida’s curiosity overcame

her. The hour was too early for callers. It might be a cable. She stole

to the front door and peered through its curtain of Honiton lace. Then

she gave a war whoop which would have horrified her servants--who,

careless as they were, stood in awe of her--flung the door open, caught

Ora in her arms and almost carried her into the library.

“Good Lord, but I’m glad to see you!” she cried. “I’m just about dead

of lonesomeness. Why didn’t you telegraph? I’d have met you if your

train didn’t get in till two in the morning.”

Ora laughed and disentangled herself, although she kissed Ida warmly.

“I just got in--came here on the way from the station and sent my bags

to the house--but I always did hate to be met. How beautiful your house

is.”

“It’s all right. But it’s about as cheerful to live alone in as one

of those palaces in the Via Garibaldi! My, but I’m glad you’re here.

You’re the only person I ever missed, and being a real lady for weeks

on end is telling on my plebeian health. I didn’t have any relief even

in New York. How’s Mark?”

“Quite well, except for his broken leg.”

“Is he here?”

“Oh, no--I left him in Santa Barbara--that is to say at the Club House

at Montecito, the fashionable suburb. He has a jolly circle of friends

there, and has no desire to travel any further until he can walk.”

Ida put her hands on Ora’s shoulders and turned her round to the

light. “What’s up?” she demanded. “You look fine, as pretty as a

picture--but--different, somehow.”

“I’ve left Mark.”

Ida glanced into the hall. The opening of back doors indicated that one

of the maids had condescended to remember she was a wage earner. “Let’s

go upstairs,” said Ida; and as they crossed the hall she said to the

girl who was hastening to the front door with a propitiating smile,

“You’re just about ten minutes too late, as usual, and the next time it

happens you lose your job. I’m not the sort that sits down and wails

over the servant question. This house will be run properly if I have to

send East for help. Now put on your hat and run down to Mrs. Blake’s

house and bring up her bags, and tell them to send her trunks here.

“Yes, you’re going to stay with me for the present,” she said, as Ora

protested. “Don’t say another word about it.”

Ora shrugged her shoulders, and when they were in Ida’s bedroom she

took off her hat and coat and wandered about aimlessly for a few

moments. Ida was almost breathless with impatience and a curious sense

of apprehension that vaguely recalled the strange terror Ora had

inspired on the day of their meeting. Ora wore a blue frock, and Ida

noticed that the yellow room did not dim her fair radiance. If possible

she was holding her head higher than usual, her skin “gleamed” more

than ever, there was a curious light in her always brilliant eyes, half

defiant, half exultant.

“Do sit down!” said Ida sharply, cutting short Ora’s voluble approval

of the room. “There, that’s right,” as Ora flung herself into a chair.

“Now, fire away. You’re brimming over with something. Do you mean that

you’ve left Mark for good and all?”

“Yes.”

“Told him so?”

Ora nodded.

“Did you tell him about Valdobia, or what? For heaven’s sake open up.”

“No, I--I thought I wouldn’t tell him everything at once. I told him

that I meant to spend the rest of my life in Europe, and that it

was only fair to himself to divorce me--he can do it easily on the

ground of desertion--and marry someone who would make a real home for

him--make him happy.”

“Ah! Mark’s the sort women marry but don’t fall in love with. And what

did he say when you handed him that?”

“He was rather broken up.”

“Really! And you? I always had an idea that when it came to the point

you wouldn’t do it. You have high-falutin’ notions about honor,

noblesse oblige, and all the rest of it, to say nothing of being really

soft, as I once told you. There’s only one thing that would make you

hard--to everyone else--and that’s being in love----”

“That is it!” exclaimed Ora eagerly. “I’ve made up my mind to marry

Valdobia. I wasn’t so sure when I left Europe, but you know what

separation often does----”

“Yes,” said Ida dryly, “I do. Well, Mark will have to take his

medicine, I guess. I’ve never doubted, since Valdobia joined us in

Genoa, that he was the man for you. It’s fate, I guess. But tell me

what Mark said, after all. Did he consent?”

“There was nothing else to do. He knew I meant it. I broke it to

him by degrees. Besides, he knew how it was long before I left for

Europe. He had practically given me up. Of course he was fond of me--I

had become a habit and made him comfortable, besides being useful

to him--but--well, I gave him six years--my youth!” she burst out

passionately. “What wouldn’t I give to wipe out those years, be twenty

again and free! I tried to make him understand that I was no longer in

the least like the bewildered undeveloped girl he had married; and that

I bore as little resemblance to the intellectual automaton I made of

myself later. I told him that I was awake once for all, and that rather

than live again with a man I couldn’t care for I’d be boiled in oil.

Then he understood.”

“I should think he might! Of course he asked if there was another man?”

“Yes, but I told him that was neither here nor there; that in any case

I should leave him and live in Europe.”

“Poor Mark! Tied by the leg, and lost in the shuffle!”

“You know as well as I do that I have nothing in me for Mark and that

if I cared as little for Valdobia it would only be fair to give him

a second throw for happiness. When I left him he was quite resigned,

and we have agreed to remain the best of friends. I shall leave him my

power of attorney as before, and he will continue to manage my affairs.”

“How much more sensible we are in our Twentieth Century! No doubt he

will visit you in the Palazzo Valdobia when he takes a whirl at Europe.”

“Why not? But tell me you think I did right, Ida?” Ora’s voice was very

sweet and plaintive.

“You did what you were bound to do, I guess, when you met a man that

could throw a lariat round the neck of that romantic imagination of

yours. Right? I don’t know. I guess I’ve got the same old streak of

Puritan Americanism in me, although if other people want to have

_liaisons_ and divorces it’s none of my affair. Women will do more and

more as they damn please, I guess, men having set them such a good

example for a few centuries. But I simply hate the idea of losing you.

I want you right here in Butte. Lord, I’ve almost forgotten may slang!”

Ora laughed with something like her old merriment. “Oh, you’ll have

me for an escape valve for a while yet. Valdobia’s mother is dying of

some lingering horrible disease. It wouldn’t be decent for me to go to

Rome, and I should be lonely anywhere else. So, I’ve made up my mind

to stay here during the summer at least, and realise a dream I used

to indulge in before I ever knew I could fall in love.” Once more she

looked straight at Ida, this time with the slow expectant smile of a

child. “I’m going to reopen my mine and run it myself--of course I

shall have a manager. Mark has written, or telegraphed, to Mr. Compton

to find one for me--but I shall live out there and go down every day,

and make believe I am doing something, too--at all events realise that

it _is_ my mine. Mining has always--that is, always did fascinate me

more than anything else on earth. I shall be devoted to Valdobia when I

am married to him, but I simply must have that adventure first----”

“For heaven’s sake don’t go dotty like Gregory over a hole in the

ground. If you get that bee buzzing round in your skull I pity poor

Valdobia. If it were not for his mother I’d cable to him to come

out----”

Ora’s face set with a hardness that arrested Ida’s observant eye.

“Don’t you do anything of the sort. Mark said once about my father,

‘It was characteristic of him that when he quit he quit for good.’ I

am always discovering more and more of my father in me. I’ll live that

old dream and it will finish when Valdobia and I both are free. Then I

shall wipe it off the slate--consign it to limbo.” She sprang to her

feet and stretched out her arms. “I am going to do exactly as I please

as long as I am free. Of course I am mad about Valdobia--you know that

I wouldn’t marry him if I were not--but I am mad too about liberty and

my mine. This is my only chance. And I am a Montanan, born in the Rocky

Mountains. I want something of the life that has made my state famous

before I become a European. I’ve never had anything of her but Butte. I

want the wild mountains--I want, above all, the mine that has given me

my freedom. I’m going to wear overalls and go down into the mine every

day.”

“A sweet sight you’ll be!” said Ida disgustedly. “And the miners--Oh,

they’ll just love the idea of having a woman at their heels! What on

earth has got hold of you? It’s the only time I’ve ever known you

to get off your base. Why, there’s nothing a woman can do at a mine

unless she’s a graduated mining engineer, and nothing then that a man

couldn’t do better. You’ll be in the way and you’ll soon be bored to

death yourself. If you’re so crazy about Montana why don’t you do some

of those great things for her that your father suggested? And how do

you reconcile your marriage to an Italian with your devotion to your

father’s memory?”

Ora turned away her head. “My father gave me too much of himself to

expect me to play the rôle of ministering angel to anything. I intend

to invest in Montana the greater part of all that I take out of my

mine. If it gives me one of the great fortunes I shall endow my state

in some way--as Mark may suggest. But I cannot live here. That is

for ever settled. When I go to Europe I shall never return--not even

to America. I shall forget my life here, everything connected with

it--everything! One side of me is already European. I shall become

wholly so.”

“Somehow,” said Ida slowly, and with the sensation of being so close

to something that she couldn’t see it, “I don’t get the idea that

you’re so mad about Valdobia. Long since I figured that when you did

love a man you’d be a sort of white pillar of flame about him. I

firmly believe that Valdobia is the man for you, but, well--he fell

too quickly. He didn’t make you suffer, never kept you guessing for

a minute. The women that turn men’s heads are a good deal like men

themselves; they’ve got to be hurt hard and kept on tenterhooks before

they are in a condition to accommodate the virus. You are fond of

Valdobia, and well you may be, but mad isn’t the right word----”

“Oh, yes it is! It is!” Ora was walking up and down the room. “You must

believe that I love him as I never dreamed I could love anybody----”

“Hi!” cried Ida. “Your letter-man! That’s what! You were more nearly in

love with him than you are with Valdobia, and because, for some reason

or other, you couldn’t get him. Where is he?”

Ora’s eyes looked large and blank. “That! I had quite forgotten it.

It was the last of a long line of mental love affairs. Those always

evaporate even from the memory when the real man comes along.” She

sighed heavily and sat down once more. “I know that I shall be happy

with Valdobia, only I am not happy now. That is so far off! And of

course I feel badly about poor Mark. But I couldn’t help it. Not to do

it would have been worse. And I should go off my head meanwhile if I

didn’t have this mine. Do you think I could remain here in Butte and go

to dinners and bridge parties? I should scream in their faces. I must

have work. Be sure I can find something to do at the mine--I suppose

there are a laboratory and assay office. And there will always be the

excitement of hoping to find free milling gold--at present what could

be more exciting than to drift for that lost vein?”

“It wouldn’t keep me awake nights. But have your own way. I don’t want

you down with nerves, and that will happen if you don’t look out.”

“If I don’t get my own way.”

“Exactly. But I wish your way marched with mine. I’ve missed you like

fury--Say!--here’s an idea: I’ll go back to Europe with you now if you

like, and stay until you marry. There are lots of places we planned to

go to and didn’t----”

“Ida, you are a dear! And you longed so for Butte. Why it would be like

tearing an author from his unfinished magnum opus. Besides--well--you

have a husband----”

“Oh, Lord! Gregory is running the Universe at present. Women don’t

exist for him. Shall we go?”

Ora shook her head. Her face had turned from white to pale. “No. I must

spend these last months of my freedom here in my state. And that lost

vein--it pulls me. I _must_ have that life for a few months--for the

first and last time. You--you--might spend your week-ends with me.”

Ida scowled and turned away her head. She had no intention of admitting

even to Ora that Gregory deliberately avoided her. “Not I. I hate the

sight of the De Smet ranch. Go, if you like, but I feel sure you will

come in often. And before you go I wish you would do me a favour.”

“Of course I will.”

“Let me give you a dinner. I want to begin that sort of thing and

you’ll furnish the excuse besides helping me out.”

“Very well. Have it soon. I want to go to the mine as quickly as

possible. I shall begin to send out the furniture for my bungalow

tomorrow.”

“A week’s notice will be enough. I’ll write the invitations today.

There’s another reason I want to give this dinner. Gregory hasn’t been

seen anywhere with me--hates going out. But I shall make him understand

that he must come to my first dinner--or people will be talking--and I

hate people prying into my affairs. Besides, it will be his duty to you

as the wife of his best friend. (He needn’t know you’ve left Mark yet

awhile.) I’m not hankering for the rôle of the neglected wife; and I’m

sick of making excuses. For all Butte knew I might not have laid eyes

on my husband since my return.”

And although she spoke bravely Ora knew that she had not. “We’ll have

the dinner,” she said warmly. “And it will be great fun to get it

up----”

“Now, come this minute and go to bed. You are to stay with me as

long as you are in this camp, and I’m going to tone you up, and make

you rest as we used to in Europe every afternoon--hard work in this

altitude but it can be done. I’ve got to go to a bridge party now, and

you are to sleep. If you feel rested when I get back, I’ll call up two

or three of your old friends and ask them to come informally to dinner.

So long.”

She closed the door of her best spare room on Ora and walked slowly

back to her own, her brows drawn; once more quick with a sensation

of profound uneasiness, of being close to something that she could

not see. But it was not her habit to ponder for long over the elusive

and obscure. “Guess I’m worried about Ora’s health,” she thought

impatiently, and rang for her maid.

VI

Two days later Gregory received the following note from his wife:

DEAR GREGORY:

Ora is here, and before going out to the mine has promised to help

me through the ordeal of my first big dinner. Entertaining goes with

this house, and although I am beginning somewhat sooner, perhaps,

than is necessary, I have my reasons. I have asked twenty-four

people, the most important of the older and the younger married

sets. The dinner is to be at eight o’clock Tuesday. I want you to

come. Yow have been very generous, but there is one thing more that

you can do for me and I feel that I have the right to demand it.

If you no longer care for me, that is something I cannot help; nor

you either for that matter. But so far as the world knows, I am

your wife, and if we are never seen together there is bound to be

disagreeable gossip. I don’t want to be gossipped about. It is vulgar

and it complicates life. The Butte women I most wanted to know are

all right, but the town has the usual allowance of fools and scandal

mongers. By showing yourself at my first dinner in your own house

you will muzzle them. You can arrive in time for dinner and take a

late train back to Pony, if there is one. But please come. I am sure

if you think it over you will admit that I am merely proving my new

knowledge of the world in asking for your formal protection.

IDA.

Gregory read this note hastily when he found it in his morning mail-bag

in company with many business letters, to which he also gave scant

attention: he was in haste to go underground. There was still no sign

of the lost vein, and nineteen days of the three weeks’ limit he had

set himself were gone. But they broke into it that same afternoon. He

barely left the mine until the following morning, but he finally sought

his cabin and bed satisfied that the recovered vein of copper pyrite

was, like the original, six feet thick and as rich in values. When he

awoke he remembered Ida’s note, and although it had provoked a frown of

annoyance when he read it, his spirits were now so ebullient that he

not only admitted the justice of her demand, but would have granted

almost anyone a reasonable request.

Moreover, as he reread the note, its restraint and dignity struck

him forcibly, as well as its remote likeness to the Ida Hook he had

wooed in Nine Mile Cañon. Certainly she had made the most of her

opportunities!

And apparently she had recovered from her first disappointment, or

pique--if, indeed, she had felt either--and he assumed that the

last year, crowded with exceptional experiences, had made her over

into something like a woman of the world. No doubt among her many

accomplishments she had acquired self-control. (That she might also

have acquired finesse did not occur to him.) He dismissed the fear

that she would make a scene--and himself thoroughly uncomfortable. On

the whole it would be interesting to see Ida as a bird of paradise.

He remembered her in shirtwaists and serviceable skirts, and recalled

that he had sometimes thought it a pity she should not have the plumage

worthy of her beauty and style.

And if the fates had willed that he must meet Ora Blake again he

preferred that the first interview should be in public.

He rang up Pony and in the course of half an hour was connected with

Butte.

“Hello!” he said cordially, as he heard his wife’s voice. “Got your

letter, but couldn’t find time to answer before. I’ll come to the

dinner with pleasure.”

“Oh, I am so glad.” Ida’s tones were crisp and cool. There was none of

the husky warmth that Gregory suddenly remembered; nor any of the old

common inflection. “Are your evening togs at Mark’s?”

“Yes, will you send for them?”

“I’ll have everything here in one of the spare rooms. The maid will

show you up if you are late. It takes me hours to dress.”

“All right. Say--Ida--I wish you’d persuade Mrs. Blake to give up that

idea of coming out here. It won’t work. She’ll only be in the way of

the men, and if there was a big row on would be one more responsibility

for her manager. I suppose she knows I’ve opened up her mine. Besides,

it’s no place for a woman anyhow. There are only a few women--miners’

wives--in my camp; none in the others.”

“I’ve told her all that. But--well--you don’t know Ora.

Gambling--taking long chances--is in her blood, I guess. You should

have seen her at Monte Carlo. You must take in Mrs. Cameron, but I am

putting Ora on your left as it is time you two got acquainted. Try to

dissuade her. I want her to stay here with me.”

“I’ll do my best. How are you getting on? Butte still panning out?”

“I adore Butte and find nothing to change. It’s too wonderful--to have

all your old dreams come true like this! I hope your mine is behaving.

I heard a rumour the other day that you had lost your vein----”

“Just found it again!”

Ida noted the exultant ring of his voice, and was about to laugh when

she changed her tactics swiftly. “Good! I know just how fine you

feel--and that it wasn’t the loss of money that worried you either.

Well, the dinner will be a sort of celebration. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.” There was a faint accent of surprise in Gregory’s voice.

Ida smiled and returned to her interrupted toilette.

“Just let me get a good chance at him once more,” she thought. “I’ll be

eating copper before I get through, but I don’t know him or his sex if

he won’t be nibbling off the same chunk.”

VII

The next week was the busiest she had ever known. All the people

that had called on her called again on Ora. Her cook collapsed when

told to prepare a dinner for twenty-eight people, and Ida, who would

not hearken to a public caterer and his too familiar idiosyncrasies,

telegraphed to St. Paul for a chef. What moments she had to spare after

consultations with this autocrat, with a temperamental designer of menu

cards, and with two high-handed young women whom she had been persuaded

by the charitable Mrs. Cameron to engage to decorate her rooms, were

spent with certain works on copper and mining that she had procured

from the public library.

She looked forward to the evening of her dinner party with a secret

excitement that seemed to fork its lightning into every recess of her

brain, and electrify it with a sense of the fulness of life--that

hinted intoxicatingly of life’s perfections. Not only was she to live

the wildest dream of Ida Hook, but she had made up her mind to bring

the most important man in Montana to her feet on that triumphant night.

That the man was her husband, won the first time without an effort,

lost through her own indifference and ignorance, added tenfold to the

zest of the game. She knew the impression he must retain of her: crude,

obvious in her sex allurement, cheaply dressed, a sort of respectable

mining-camp siren; all her fascinations second-rate, and her best

points in the eyes of an absent-minded husband her good-natured

mothering and admirable cooking.

If she had returned to find him as she had left him, a mere brilliant

hard-working student, and automatically attentive to his home partner,

no doubt she would have slipped into her original rôle at once, for she

was normally amiable, and she had strict ideas of wifely duties, which

her insistent vanity and deliberate flirtations never for a moment

endangered. They also filled the practical wants of a nature not

derived from artistic ancestors. She had had her “flyer”, and, allowing

for social triumphs, returned to Butte to settle down; although it

had been with a certain complacency that she had reflected during the

homeward journey upon the altered circumstances which would enable her

to live like a civilised being in her own apartments and see far less

of her husband than formerly.

Her complacency had been treated to a succession of shocks since her

return; it had, in fact, finally gasped out its life; although it had

left self-confidence behind to sit at the feet of her shrewd clear

mind. She found a zest entirely new in bringing to his knees a man who

had been her husband when she was too raw and conceited to appreciate

him, who had developed into a personage, and who had conquered his mere

maleness and put women out of his life: she had consulted a detective

agency and convinced herself that her only rival was the mine. Ida was

nothing if not practical. Before preparing for her siege she chose to

know exactly where she stood. A rival of her sex would have demanded

one sort of tactics; a mere mine and the quickened business instinct

of a dreaming but outclassing brain, although she did not underrate

their peculiar dead walls and buffers, exacted a different and more

impersonal assault--at first.

Much that she had failed to understand in her young husband was clear

to her now. His silences, his formidable powers of concentration, his

habit of thinking out his purposes unto the smallest detail before

verbal expression, his tendency to dream, combined with lightning

processes of thought, were the indispensable allies of his peculiar

gifts: she had talked with too many brilliant and active men during the

past year, to say nothing of her daily association with Ora, for whose

inherited and progressive intellect she had the highest respect, and

her own development had been too positive, rapid, and normal, not to be

fully aware that men born with the genius to conquer life were equipped

with powerful imaginations that necessarily made them silent thinkers.

She had become intensely proud of her husband since her return, and his

neglect, coupled with his scrupulous generosity, had stung her pride

and aroused both desire and determination to recapture what she had

lost. She had no great faith in her capacity for love; but not only

was she fascinated by Gregory for the first time but she found him more

worthy of her accomplished coquetry than any man she had met in Europe.

She was firm in her resolve to repossess her husband, but not merely to

satisfy that pride which was the evolution of a more primitive vanity;

she felt a certain joyousness, a lilt of the spirit, at the thought of

spending her life with him, of being the complete helpmate of such a

man; even a disposition to dream, which was so new in her experience

that she banished it with a frown. “If I let go like other fool women,

I’ll make a grand mess of it,” was her characteristic reflection.

She was dressing for the dinner when she heard him enter the house. The

parlour maid for once remembered her instructions, and led him up to

his room, which was on the opposite side of the hall from his wife’s

and at the extreme end. Her door was ajar, she heard his voice--whose

depth and richness were decimated by the telephone--his light foot

ascending the stair. For the moment she lost her breath, then with

an angry jerk of the shoulders regained her poise, and, in tones

careless enough to reassure any husband suddenly overwhelmed with the

awkwardness of his position, called out:

“Good evening, Gregory. Hope you’ll find everything you want in your

room. Ring if you don’t. See you downstairs.”

“Oh--thanks!” Gregory swallowed an immense sigh of relief. “I’ll be on

time.”

Ida, assisted by the “upstairs girl”--she had not yet found a ladies’

maid willing to come to Butte--continued her toilette. Her gown was

as nearly Renaissance as she thought her native Northwest would

stand at this stage of her social progress. It was “built”--a word

more appropriate to woman’s dress A.D. 1600 than today--of heavy

turquoise-blue brocade, the design outlined here and there with gold

thread. The long wrinkled sleeves almost covered her hands, and,

like the deep square of the neck, were tipped with fur. Her mass of

blue-black hair was closely twisted around her head from brow to the

nape of her neck, held above the low forehead by a jewelled stiletto

Ora had given her in Genoa, “to remind her of her midnight diversions

in the Renaissance palace over which her dim ancestral memories

brooded.” This she had dismissed as damn nonsense, but she liked the

stiletto with its rudely set stones, and had promised to wear it the

first time she got inside one of her near-Renaissance gowns.

The pale subtle blue of the dress made her eyes look light and

altogether blue, the thick black underlashes and full white underlids

giving them an expression when in repose of cold voluptuousness. Her

skin against the dark edge of fur was as white as warm new milk.

Her costume and her regal air would have made her noticeable in the

proudest assemblage. She was well aware that not only was she a very

beautiful woman tonight but a dangerous one. And she might have stepped

from one of the tarnished frames in the Palazzo Valdobia.

After the maid had been dismissed, she examined herself even more

critically. The coral of lip and cheek, while still eloquent of youth

and health, was more delicate than of old; all suggestion of buxomness

had disappeared. She looked older than when she had left Butte; the

casual observer would have given her thirty years; her cheeks were

less full, her mouth had firmer lines; the cold grey-blue eyes more

depth, justified their classic setting. Even her profile, released by

the finer contour of cheek and thrown into high relief by the severe

arrangement of her hair, contributed to the antique harmonies of her

head and form.

“You’ll do,” she said to her image, and went down stairs.

Several guests arrived at once and she was standing before her antique

English chimneypiece carved in California, chatting with three of

them when Gregory entered the room. She nodded amiably as if they

had met too recently for formalities. He took the cue and paused to

exchange a few words with two men that stood near the door. But Ida

had seen the startled opening of his narrow eyes which meant so much

in him. She also noted that, as other guests came in, he looked at

her again and again. In truth Gregory was startled almost out of his

trained stolidity. He had known a certain side of Ida’s cleverness,

and believed when he sent her abroad that she would make much of her

opportunities, the greatest of which was her constant association

with Ora Blake; but that she would return in less than a year looking

the great lady, and the handsomest woman he had ever seen, even his

energetic imagination had failed to consider. Magnetism, as of old,

surrounded her like an aura, but to this he was insensible, his own

magnetism having been caught and entangled with that of another. He

felt very proud of his wife, however, and, with a sudden impulse

of loyalty, he crossed the room and stood at her side. He also was

prompted to say in a tone pitched to reach other ears:

“By George, you are simply stunning. I haven’t seen

this--a--frock--dress--before.”

“Gown, my dear, gown. It only arrived a few days ago. I shall take you

to Europe with me next time--”

“Take him soon!” said Mrs. Cameron. “Don’t give him time to wear out

before he has begun to live. Our tired business men!”

“Next year!” said Ida, gayly. “He has half-promised and I’ll not let

him off.” As she looked into his eyes with bright friendliness, his

face relaxed with the smile which, she suddenly remembered, always had

won her from anger or indifference. He was openly delighted with her,

the more completely as he was both puzzled and relieved to see that

those splendid eyes held neither cold anger nor feminine reproach.

Moreover, although they softened for an instant before she was obliged

to turn away, it was with an expression that made her look merely sweet

and womanly, not in the least coquette or siren. Other guests claimed

her attention. He heard her give a little hiss, and saw her eyes flash.

Then he forgot her. Ora had entered the room.

Her gown, of some soft imponderable fabric that gave the impression

of depth in colour, was the peculiar flaming blue of the night sky of

Montana. Gregory was reminded instantly of the night they had sat on

the steps of the School of Mines, with the pulsing sky so close above

them. The upper part of the gown was cut in points that curved above

her slight bust, the spaces between filled with snow-white chiffon

which appeared to be folded softly about the body. She wore her pearls,

but at the base of her slender throat was a closely fitting string of

Montana sapphires, of the same hot almost angry blue. Her little head

with its masses of soft ashen hair seemed to sway on the long stem-like

neck, her stellar eyes blazed. Her costume extinguished every other

blue in the room.

“Really!” said Mrs. Cameron, whose black eyes under her coronet of

iron grey hair were snapping, “these two dear friends should have had

a consultation over their costumes for tonight.” She had never liked

Ora, and although, as the leader of Butte society, she made a point of

speaking well of all whom she did not feel obliged to ignore, she had

taken a deep liking to Ida; moreover, always a handsome woman herself,

she felt both sympathetic and indignant. This was Ida’s night, and she

scented treachery.

She had addressed her remark to Gregory, but although he looked at

her politely he would not have heard thunder crashing on the roof. He

wondered if he were standing erect; he had a confused impression that

that wonderful blue gown was burning alcohol whose fumes were in his

head and whose flames swirled through all his senses. And the woman

within those curling blue flames was so much more beautiful than his

memory of her that he forgot not only his recent tribute to Ida, but

her bare existence until she tapped him sharply on the arm.

“Dinner has been announced,” she said. “You are to take in Mrs.

Cameron.” Ida was smiling again; she had dismissed anger and annoyance;

nothing was to dim the radiance of her spirits tonight. She and Ora

would be at opposite ends of the table, and she could keep the length

of the drawing-room between them when they returned.

Gregory’s face never betrayed him, particularly when he kept his

eyelids down, and, as he shook hands with Ora in the dining-room he

told her he was glad to see her again as casually as if his hand had

not tingled to crush hers. He talked with Mrs. Cameron, however, as

long as possible, but when her attention was claimed by the man on her

right, he was obliged to turn to Ora. By this time his blood was still.

Eating is commonplace work, and talking the inevitable platitudes of a

dinner’s earlier courses will steady the most riotous pulses.

Ora smiled impersonally; her eyes might have beheld the husband of her

friend for the first time.

“I am so glad to be able to ask you something about my mine,” she said.

“Ida tells me that you have reopened it.”

“Yes, they are already through the fault and driving for the vein.

There happened to be a good man here looking for a job when I got

Mark’s telegram, a young engineer from the East, named Raymond. The

miners are good capable men, too, and as Osborne and Douglas installed

a compressor, the work should be pretty quick. I fancy you’ll recover

the vein in a week or two.”

“I wonder if I shall? Mark thinks you infallible, but it seems too good

to be true.”

“The vein is there, about a hundred feet down, but how rich it is I do

not venture to predict.”

“Well, never mind,” Ora smiled happily. “I shall have the fun of

looking for it, and I want to be with the men when they find it.”

“Oh--Ah--It really would be better for you to give up that idea of

going out there to stay----”

“I thought I would give to you the opportunity to say that at once! Do

go on and relieve your mind.”

“It is neither safe nor desirable,” he said sulkily. “I may have a row

on my hands any minute. Your men and my men are a decent lot, but the

Apex have employed a lot of scum so ignorant that there is no knowing

what they may do in a crisis--in the hope of currying favour with

their superiors. They would merely be made scapegoats or--canned--I

beg pardon, fired--but they don’t know that, and they’re as hard a lot

as Europe ever kicked on to our dump heap. Better stay here for the

present.”

“I’ve sent out all the furniture for the bungalow, and Custer and a

Chinaman to put it in order. I suppose my engineer can camp in the

other cottage until it is finished. That is quite close to mine, I

understand.”

“Oh, of course--but why not stay at my ranch house----”

“That is too far from the scene of operations. Please don’t bother

about me. I should hate to think I was on your mind--you have enough! I

shall be well protected, and I’ve even bought an automatic. I suppose

being a born Westerner I should call it a gun. But it’s such a little

one. I shall carry it always----”

“Yes, promise that.”

“I’ve even had a little bag made, like those they wore years ago, to

fasten to my belt, and I shall keep it in that.”

“Very well.” He dismissed the subject. “I--ah--there’s something I

heard today, but perhaps I should not speak of it. Only Mark is such an

old friend of mine----”

“I suppose you saw Mr. Luning and he told you that we are to separate.”

“Yes, that is it.”

“I intend to live in Europe: I suppose you think that a callous reason.”

“It’s as good as most reasons for divorce in this country. When is Mark

coming back?”

“Not for two months. Nothing will be done until then. I want to have my

mining experience first and I shall leave Montana as soon as the papers

are served.”

“Ah!”

Her partner claimed her at the moment and, his own still being

occupied, he observed her furtively. He thought that she too looked

older, but not because advantages had improved her; rather--he groped

for the words that would give definiteness to his impression--as if

some experience had saddened her. She had a softer expression. The

blood rushed to his head and he almost choked with jealousy, his

intuitions carrying him straight to the truth. “By God! She has loved

some man,” he thought. Then he set his teeth. So much the better.

But when she turned to him again, he said impulsively, although his

tones were light:

“You never did fit this Western life of ours. Of course you have found

a more civilised mate in Europe?”

“You are all wrong,” she said gaily. “My only love at present is my

mine. My mine! You should understand if anybody can.”

“Oh, yes, I understand that magnet. But I naturally thought----”

“What everybody else will think when the news is out. But I am

astonished that you should jump at anything so commonplace.” Her heart

was hammering under the concentrated intensity of his gaze; and as

if he realised suddenly that he might be betraying himself he said

sarcastically:

“As there are--I was told today--no less than six divorces pending in

this set which my wife has the honour to entertain tonight, and as all

are to intermarry, so to speak, when liberated, my conclusion in your

case was probably due to the force of suggestion.”

“Well, I forgive you if you promise to believe none of the absurd

stories you are sure to hear. I am in love with freedom. Now tell me

what you think of Ida? Isn’t she wonderful?”

Gregory looked down the table at his wife sitting between the two most

important men in Butte and entertaining both with animated dignity. She

met his eyes and smiled brilliantly. She knew that he was proud of her;

she had accomplished the second manœuvre in her flank attack: her first

had been to put him at his ease.

“Yes,” he said to Ora. “She is. It is almost beyond belief. And she is

your handiwork!” The two might have been life-long intimates, and Ida

a mere kinswoman of both, so little did the oddity of this discussion

occur to Gregory at least.

“And in a way my present to you.” Ora spoke with a charming

graciousness. “Mark had given me a tremendous idea of your abilities.

The day I met Ida I saw her possibilities, and I made up my mind then

and there that when the world claimed you your wife should be not only

an inspiration but equipped to render you the practical and social help

that every rising man needs. Isn’t it splendid to think that she will

always sit at the head of your table?”

Gregory was staring hard at her again. “You did that deliberately?” he

asked.

“Yes. Deliberately. Ida is so clever that she was bound to develop with

your rising fortunes, particularly if you sent her to Europe. But it

would have taken longer. I couldn’t wait. My father inspired me with

the deepest admiration and respect for our Western men. I had made up

my mind that you were born into the front rank, and I wanted, as a

Western woman, and my father’s daughter, to do something to help you.

Tell me that you are satisfied and that you are as proud of Ida as she

is of you--that--that--you simply adore her.” She did not flinch, and

looked him straight in the eyes, her own full of young, almost gushing,

enthusiasm. Her heart had almost stopped beating.

“I certainly am proud of her, and grateful to you. No doubt she will be

very helpful if I am forced into politics to conserve my interests.”

His tones were flat. He had come to his senses, and he was too loyal

to hint that he no longer loved his wife: but Ora’s face was suddenly

flooded with a lovely colour, and her eyes looked like grey mist

through which the sun was bursting. She asked him,

“Aren’t you going to stay with us for a few days! We’d love to have

you?”

“I take the 6.10 for Pony in the morning. If I disappear before the

others it will be to snatch a few hours’ sleep in that gorgeous

four-poster in my room. After living in two rooms for so long I am

oppressed with all this magnificence----”

“Two rooms!” Ora’s voice rang out like an excited child’s. Gregory,

marvelling at the quick transitions of her sex, thought he had never

seen anyone look so happy. The gentle melancholy that had roused his

jealousy was obliterated. “Two rooms!”

“There is another shack just beyond where my Chinaman cooks for me, and

bunks, but I have only a bedroom and office--and a bathroom of sorts.

Even my secretary sleeps at the ranch house.”

“You dear innocent millionaire. No doubt the proletariat, reading of

your sudden wealth, and cursing you, pictures you wallowing in luxury.

Well, you shall come and sit sometimes in my comfortable living-room.

It is time you relearned the a, b, c, of comfort--before you relapse

into the pioneer.”

“Your bungalow looks as if it could be made very homelike.” He spoke

with unconscious wistfulness, and she raised friendly and impersonal

eyes to his.

“You shall see. I have what the French call the gift of installation,

and I have sent out nice things. I shall make tea for you when you come

to the surface at the end of the afternoon shift, and you shall sit in

the deepest of my chairs.”

“It sounds like heaven,” said Gregory, who despised tea.