“Oh, yes, _brains_! I make a fine distinction between mere brains and

intellect. He has the sort of mental composition those men always

seem to have in order that they may make use of their luck and roll

up millions. But intellect? Not a cell. He has never read anything. I

journeyed with him from Pony to Butte not long since and endeavoured

to engage him in conversation. I might as well have tried to talk to a

mummy--and an ill-mannered one at that. The moment I left the subject

of mines he merely looked out of the window.”

Ora laughed merrily, and poured out the tea the Chinaman had brought

in. “Perhaps it is just that lack of overdevelopment that we call

intellect which permits these men to concentrate upon their genius for

making money.”

“But that has nothing to do with their luck in the beginning. Luck!

Blind luck! Fool’s luck! And why not to me? Why to this Gregory

Compton? I never believed in luck before, but since this rush, and

my own personal experience----” He swallowed a mouthful of tea

too hastily, scalded himself, and, while he was gasping, Ora said

soothingly:

“You cannot help believing in luck if you study the early history of

any mining state. There are hundreds of stories of prospectors--you

have told of many yourself; the majority had little or no education,

less science. Out of a hundred evenly equipped with grit, common sense,

some practical knowledge of ores, perhaps two would find a rich pocket

or placer. Four or five possibly made a strike that would insure them

a competence if they neither gambled nor drank. The rest nothing--not

after forty years of prospecting in these mountains. I fancy there is

something in that old phrase about the lucky star; in astronomical

parlance the position of the planets at the moment of one’s birth.”

“But why not I?” wailed the professor. “Why--why this--well, he is a

friend of yours--Gregory Compton?”

“_Why not?_”

“I am infinitely his superior in every way!” cried Whalen in perfect

good faith. “It is I who should have discovered those millions and

taken them to Beacon Street, not this obscure young Westerner, son of

an illiterate old ranchman----”

“But you didn’t,” said Ora, patiently. “Besides, the fates are not

unjust. They made you a member of the New England aristocracy, and gave

you intellect. Do not be unreasonable and demand the mere prospector’s

luck as well.”

Whalen looked at her suspiciously, but her eyes were teasing, not

satiric. He had admired her always more than any woman he had met in

the West, and had come to her blindly to be consoled. Suddenly he saw

an indefinable change steal over her face, although her mouth remained

curled with the stereotyped smile she kept for the Whalens. It was as

if something deep in her brilliant eyes came to life, and her slight

bust rose under the stiff shirtwaist. Whalen’s ears were not acute and

he did not hear the light footstep that preceded a peremptory knock.

Ora crossed the room swiftly and opened the door. Whalen was no fool,

and he had written fiction for four years. He had guessed at once that

his beautiful hostess loved the man who demanded admittance, and when

he heard Gregory Compton’s voice he almost whistled. But he merely

arose and frowned.

“Knocked off and thought I would run in early,” Gregory was beginning,

when he saw Whalen. “How are you?” he asked with more cordiality than

he usually wasted upon the little man. His spirits always flew to his

head when he met Ora, stolid as he might look. “How’s your mine getting

on?” he added, as he selected the longest of the chairs before the

fire. “Heard it had petered out.”

“It has!”

“I’ll go over and have a look at it tomorrow if you like. I fancy

you’re located too close to one of the faults. The trouble with you

amateur prospectors--or buyers of prospectors’ claims--is that you

don’t take a geologist out with you. You lose your heads over an assay

report on exceptional specimens. But I’d like to see for myself.”

“It’s no use,” said Whalen gloomily. “I have used up all my money in

that----” He had learned to swear in mining camp society, but he pulled

himself up hastily, “that hole.”

“If I think there is anything there I’ll grub-stake you. Nobody would

buy your claim, but somebody might jump it if you let it lapse, and I

want to know who my neighbours are. Have you patented it?”

“Not yet.”

“Spent five hundred dollars on it?”

“_Have_ I!”

“Well, I’ll look at it tomorrow, and if I think it’s good for anything

I’ll help you out. I am going to Helena in a day or two. Come along and

apply for your patent.”

“You are very kind.” Whalen felt repentant, and more grateful than he

had ever condescended to feel before. “I’ll expect you tomorrow.” He

inferred that he could best show his gratitude by taking himself off,

and rose. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Blake. This hour has been refreshing

and inspiring after my long absence from civilisation.”

“You must come soon again,” said Ora sweetly, as she marshalled him

out. “The best of luck.”

She went to her bedroom for a few moments, and when she returned wore

a soft tea gown made of several shades of woodland greens. She seated

herself in her favourite chair, straight, with a high carved back, and

took up her neglected embroidery. “Dinner will not be ready for half an

hour,” she said. “How long that little man did stay. I am glad you made

a friend of him, for I have always imagined that he could be venomous,

and before you came in he was by way of hating you. Now tell me the

surprise you have for the geologists and newspaper men on the second

level.”

And for the next three hours they talked of ores.

XVIII

“Give me your hand, Gregory. I am no coward, but this is the first time

I have ever been underground. My father would never permit it, nor my

mother after him.”

Gregory extended his long arm behind him and Ida’s warm firm fingers

clung to his hand. They had just left the skip at the second level of

his mine. The geologists and the newspaper men, together with herself,

Lord John, Gregory, and Mann, had entered the mine by way of the Primo

shaft, inspected the insignificant vein of copper which had merely

been blocked out, awaiting the possible erection of a concentrating

plant--for it was not worth the expense of freight to Anaconda--thence

down the ladder from the hole blasted by Apex, and into the drift

where the magnificent vein of Perch of the Devil also merely had been

blocked out; but for a more subtle reason. The case in Gregory’s favour

was so flagrant that the great men had laughed, although gracefully

submitting to interviews on the spot and expressing themselves with

as few technicalities as possible. That the Primo copper upon which

Apex had also sunk was a mere attenuated fork of the great vein which

indisputably had faulted from the original vein in Gregory Compton’s

property the reporters could see for themselves. Under the Apex law

Gregory was within his lateral rights in sinking under the adjoining

claim and thence under the Primo mine; and as far beyond as the vein

persisted.

Against a man less determined and resourceful than Gregory Compton

a wealthy corporation could obtain any verdict it demanded; but to

persist in a suit for Apex rights after this public exposition would

make any trust the laughing-stock of a continent. Even to persist

in the claim that he was mining under an agricultural patent, and

therefore outside his rights, would be mere petty persecution; and

inevitably both suits would steal noiselessly to limbo. Amalgamated

knew when it was beaten and would take its medicine with a grimace and

watch for its next opportunity.

Ida, although she disliked the sensation of being underground, the

chill of the tunnels and the drip of candle-grease on her smart linen

skirt, had been deeply impressed by the scene in the excavation on the

Perch vein: the men with their keen upturned faces, their peering eyes

so close to the moving candles, the little yellow flames travelling

along the beautiful yellow metal, the eager nervous hands of the

newspaper men, the intense blackness beyond the radius of the candles.

But her eyes returned constantly to her husband’s face. His eyes

gleamed with copper fires. His profile against the dark background of

the cavern looked as if carved in the rock by some prehistoric race.

The blood scorched her face and her heart leapt with pride as she heard

these distinguished men defer to him, express their admiration without

reserve. A year ago he had been as little known as when she married

him. Today his extraordinary abilities were recognised by the entire

country, and tomorrow he would be one of its colossi.

She was the only woman that had gone down. Mrs. Cameron and Mrs.

Collier had preferred to remain comfortably with Ora in the bungalow,

or to help her spread the tables under the pines, where luncheon was to

be served. Therefore was she privileged to keep close to the host, and

when they descended into the blackness of the second level she embraced

further her feminine prerogatives. Mann had gone down first, the guests

had followed, and Gregory, after a vain protest, had taken her down in

the skip when it returned for himself.

The rest of the party had pushed forward, for they had been promised a

surprise. Ida would have lingered, but Gregory pulled her on. He wanted

to hear the comments. The racket of the drills had stopped. Ida saw the

last of the guests disappear up a short ladder.

“Am I to go up into a stope?” she asked.

“If you want to see what we’ve come for.” He ran up the ladder, and she

followed, insinuated herself into the hole and stood upright in the

large excavation on the vein.

“Is it gold?” she gasped.

“No, but it’s a streak--a shoot--of chalcopyrite ten feet wide and of

the highest value. And it may go down eight or nine hundred feet before

it loses its richness and degenerates into a lower grade of ore. But

there may be millions of tons of that. This is one of the few great

shoots of chalcopyrite known.”

“Gregory!” said Ida ecstatically, “do you remember I always had such

faith in you that I urged you so often to prospect on the ranch that

you got quite cross?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Never say I doubted you. I may be enchanted at all this success and

recognition of your abilities, but I have never had the least sensation

of surprise.”

Gregory smiled down into the eager beautiful face so close to his

shoulder. She had manipulated him down the ladder into the tunnel and

for the moment they were alone. “I hope you are half as proud of me as

I am of you,” he said gallantly, although he was a trifle uneasy; not

because she looked as if she might kiss him there in the semi-dark, but

because he felt an impulse to kiss her. For the moment he regretted the

wild romance upon which he was embarked, the torments of its present,

the tragic possibilities of its future. Ida now would make an ideal

wife, demanding far less of his jealously guarded inner self, to say

nothing of his time, than Ora, who had that most terrible of all gifts,

a passionate soul. But this disloyalty was brief, and he frowned and

disengaged his hand, although he was far from suspecting that Ida had

yielded to the temptation to pay him deliberate court.

“I shall be able to give you a string of pearls before long,” he said

lightly, “or a million or two to play with. I want to hear what these

men have to say. Suppose you go back with Lord John, and tell them that

we are coming up soon for lunch. Ring the bell in the station twice for

the skip and three times for hoist.”

Ida shrank back against the wall as if she had been struck, but when

Lord John, who had made several futile attempts to separate her from

her husband, came eagerly forward, she left Gregory to the chorus of

enthusiasm and congratulation, and obeyed his directions.

XIX

Ida was in such high spirits during the luncheon that she managed to be

brilliant and amusing within the limits of her expurgated vocabulary.

Only Ora, who knew her so well, saw the sombre fire in the depths of

her eyes, the sudden twist of her mouth at the corners, noted that

her cheeks were crimson instead of their usual delicate coral, the

occasional clenching of her hands. But she had little time to speculate

upon the cause, for the large party were her guests, and, like any

other Rocky Mountain hostess in the liquid month of June, she feared

the sudden drenching of her tables.

But the day remained fine, and the geologists, who ever since their

arrival in Butte had evinced a remarkable indifference to geology as a

topic for conversation, were as lively as the newspaper men, and deeply

appreciative of the good looks and animated conversation of the four

women who ate almost nothing in their efforts at mental subdivision.

Ora had invited also her engineer and Professor Whalen, placing the

latter as far from Ida as possible; but she saw that he was covertly

watching the woman he must hate. Ida had thrown him a careless nod when

they met by the tables in the grove; and he had returned it with a bow

of surpassing dignity.

Gregory, now that the men of science and of the press had served his

purpose, was eager to be rid of them, and excused himself when the

luncheon was half over, on the plea that he was his own manager and

needed at the mine. He disappeared into the Primo shaft house, as he

often took that short cut to his own shaft, and Mowbray, who had been

silent, for Gregory affected his buoyant spirits unaccountably, moved

his chair up beside Ida and endeavoured to divert her mind from the

general to the specific. But she snubbed him and he relapsed into

gloom. On the train, however, when she saw that Whalen, who was on his

way to Helena to apply for his patent, was watching her, she flirted

pointedly with the handsome Englishman.

The guests were to leave Butte on the seven o’clock train, which,

fortunately for the strain that all were beginning to feel, was only

half an hour late. When it had pulled out and Ida had waved her last

farewell, she walked in silence to her car, and intimated with a

curt nod that Mowbray might take the seat beside her. “But tell Ben

where you want to go,” she said, “for I can’t ask you to dine with me

tonight.”

Mowbray told the chauffeur to drop him at the Club and then asked his

lady, whose animation had dropped to zero, if anything had happened to

annoy her, or if she were merely worn out.

“Don’t ask me any questions,” said Ida sharply. “I’m sorry to seem

inhospitable but I’ve got something to think out. You can go to the

dance at the Country Club.”

“I shall more likely go to my rooms and write letters. Don’t worry

about me. Shall we have a ride tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t know.”

Mowbray was always philosophical about women, having been brought

up with many sisters. “You are tired out,” he said without too much

sympathy. “Just call me up if you feel like doing anything in the

morning.”

“All right. Good night.”

She left him at the Silver Bow Club. Her own house was only a few

blocks distant. She told the maid who admitted her that she wanted no

dinner and should go to bed at once and without assistance. When she

reached the seclusion of her bedroom she locked the door, flung her hat

on the floor and stamped on it, broke several valuable objects, and

then paced up and down, gritting her teeth to keep from screaming.

There was but one person on earth that she hated more than she hated

Gregory Compton and that was herself. She had meant to play a waiting

game of many interviews, in which her fine calculation had mapped out

the insidious approach, the adroit pushing aside of barrier after

barrier, until Gregory returned almost inadvertently to his allegiance.

She had no desire for romantic scenes; they would have embarrassed

herself, and with her instinctive knowledge of man, she knew that

Gregory would shrink back from any situation that might involve

explanations. Nor did she wish to let a man so absorbed as Gregory feel

that he was loved too much, lest he chafe at the thought of feminine

exactions, and his mind continue to dwell upon the delights of freedom.

He might be capable of moments when the woman alone existed, but there

would be long intervals when he would hate a woman’s clinging arms if

they made him ten minutes late for his work, particularly if he was

headed for his beloved mine. Ida, shrewd, self-controlled, watchful,

knew herself, now that her powers were developed, to be the natural

mate for such a man. He would drive a temperamental woman mad.

And she had seemed to make a steady progress. The geologists had

remained for three days in Butte before visiting Perch of the Devil.

On the second evening they had been entertained by the professors of

the School of Mines, but on the other two evenings she had given them

elaborate dinners, and Gregory had attended each. She had seen that he

was increasingly proud of her, and grateful. Upon both occasions they

not only had had a little talk apart but he had drifted back to her

more than once.

And today she had spoiled everything! In the darkness of that mine she

had weakened and made open love to him. She had practically offered

herself--she ground her teeth as she thought of her clinging fingers,

her appealing eyes, her cheek almost brushing his--and he had rejected

her--with consideration, but finality!

If he had knocked her down she would have cherished hope. But in this

hour she had none. His indifference was colossal. The busiest men in

America had their women; she no longer could comfort herself with the

delusion that the mine was a controlling and exclusive passion; she

merely had ceased completely to attract him--and she remembered how

thorough he was; she no more could relight those old fires than she

could blow life into the dead ashes of Big Butte. He would turn to

another woman one of these days; it was not within human possibility

that he would go through life without love; but not to her! not to

her! She would do to entertain his friends, to flaunt his wealth

and advertise his success; in time no doubt he would treat her as a

confidential friend; but sexually she was an old story. It was apparent

that the mere thought bored him; it was only when Gregory was bored

that he was really polite.

If she could but have accepted this, resigned all hope, instead of

subjecting herself to humiliation; she, who had never failed to send

the blood to a man’s head with a glance! She didn’t want to hate him.

She didn’t want to hate herself. Why could she not have been content to

accept the inevitable with philosophy and grace?

The answer that, owing to some mysterious law of her being, she loved

him, made her want to smash everything else in the room; but she would

have some difficulty concealing the present wreckage from her servants,

so she bit her handkerchief to shreds instead.

When the furies had tired her body she fell into a chair and although

her brain was still hot with the blood sent there by excitement and

lack of food, she admitted frankly that the peculiar nature of her

agitation was due to wounded pride and intense mortification; had

she arrived at a point where she no longer could hope, but without

self-betrayal, she might have wept bitter tears, but there still would

have been a secret sweetness in loving him. Now, she growled out her

hatred. She longed to do something to hurt him. If she only were

another sort of woman! She would go to Mowbray’s rooms, go to Helena

with him for a week. And simultaneously she yearned to be consoled, not

only in her heart but in her wounded pride.

Should she ask her husband for a divorce; revenge herself by becoming

an English duchess? Ora, in the moment or two they had found together

at the station, had told her that Mowbray’s older brother was at Davos,

unmistakably dying of tuberculosis, and that his engagement, insisted

upon by his father, had been broken. Valdobia had given her this news

in his last letter, adding the hope that his friend would bring Ida

back with him that they might all be together once more.

Was this the solution of her problem? A marriage that would demonstrate

to Gregory Compton that her moment of seeming weakness was mere

coquetry; a marriage that would raise her an immeasurable social

distance above him; a permanent dissociation from everything that could

remind her of him and this terrible obsession that had disorganised

her being, reduced her to the grovelling level of the women whose

dependence on the favour of man she had always despised?

When she reflected that her revenge would fall flat, Gregory’s not

being the order of mind to appreciate the social pre-eminence of a

titled race, she ground her teeth, again. There was nothing left but

to consider herself. Should she choose the part that not only would

exalt her station and fill her life with the multifarious interests of

a British peeress, but banish this man in time from her memory; or stay

on and alternate torments with moments of indescribable sweetness when

he smiled upon her? And might she not yet manipulate him into her net

if she continued to play the waiting game? Or would she go wholly to

pieces the first time they were alone together?

Her pride strangled at this possibility and brought her to her feet.

The blood was still boiling in her head, she knew what nerves were for

the first time in her life. She made up her mind to go out and walk. In

this part of the town she was not likely to meet anyone.

She found another hat, put on a warm coat, and let herself out of the

house. It was ten o’clock. All the West Side, no doubt, was at the

Country Club.

For a time she walked rapidly and aimlessly, trying to focus her mind

on other things. But when a woman is in love and the path is stony, she

is obsessed much as people are that suffer from shock and reiterate

ceaselessly the circumstances of its cause. Her brain seethed with

hate, longed for revenge. Nothing would have gratified her more than to

take the secret revenge of infidelity. Many a woman has taken a lover

for the satisfaction of laughing to herself at her husband’s dishonour;

to dishonour being the most satisfactory of all vengeance, whether open

or concealed.

She realised abruptly that her thoughts had led her unconsciously to

the door of John Mowbray’s lodgings. The flat had been lent him by a

banker to whom he had brought a letter from his brother, and who had

gone East immediately after his arrival; the banker’s wife lived in

Southern California. It occupied the second story of a house in West

Broadway and had its own entrance on a side street. Mowbray had given a

tea there a day or two before, and Ida had presided.

She did not delude herself for a moment that she could take her

full revenge upon the unconscious Gregory, but at least she could do

something quite shocking, something that would infuriate a husband.

Ida was not afraid of any man, least of all one that wished to make a

duchess of her, but it would be an additional satisfaction to torment

him, and an adventure with a spice of danger in it no doubt would

restore her equilibrium. If Mowbray made violent love to her she felt,

by some obscure process of feminine logic, that she would forgive

Gregory Compton.

She glanced hastily up and down the street, then more sharply,

wondering if she had dreamed that once or twice she had looked over her

shoulder with the sense of being followed. It was a bright moonlight

night. No one was in sight. She rang the bell of Mowbray’s flat. The

door was opened from above. At the head of the stairs stood the Jap who

served as housekeeper and valet.

She hesitated a moment, taken aback. She had forgotten the servant.

Then she closed the door behind her. “Is Lord John in?” she asked

negligently.

The Jap spread out his hands deprecatingly. “His lordship not at home,”

he announced.

Ida hesitated another moment, then ascended the stair and entered the

living-room. “Turn on the lights,” she said, “I shall wait for him.”

The Jap obeyed orders, bowed, and withdrew. For a moment Ida was

tempted to telephone to the Silver Bow Club, but Mowbray was sure to

return soon to write his letters, and she liked the idea of giving him

a surprise. She lit a cigarette, selected a novel from the bookcase,

and sank into the most comfortable of the chairs. The room was warm;

both body and brain were very weary. The cool night air had driven the

blood from her head. She yawned, dropped the book, fell sound asleep.

She awoke as the clock was striking half-past one. She was still alone.

For a moment she stared about her, bewildered, then rose and laughed

aloud.

“This is about the flattest----” She went swiftly out into the hall

and awoke the slumbering Jap. “You little yellow devil,” she cried,

“why didn’t you tell me that his lordship had gone to the party at the

Country Club?”

Once more the Jap was deprecating. “Madam did not ask.”

Ida produced a gold piece. “Well, you are not to tell him that I came,

nor anyone else. If you do I’ll wring your neck.”

The Jap’s eyes, fixed upon the gold, glistened. “Why should I tell?” he

asked philosophically; and having pocketed the coin ran downstairs and

bowed the lady out.

When Ida was about to turn the corner she whirled about, this time

with a definite sensation of being followed. But the street was empty

save for a man slouching down the hill with an unsteady gait, his head

nodding toward his chest. It was a familiar sight in any mining town;

nevertheless she quickened her steps, and in a moment was safe within

her own house.

XX

On the morning following the departure of the geologists Gregory took

the bit between his teeth and went in to Butte to see his wife. In his

first moment of shock and confusion it had seemed to him best that Ora,

whose subtlety he recognised, was the one to manipulate Ida’s still too

formalistic mind toward the divorce court; but he was unaccustomed to

relegate any part of his affairs to others, least of all to a woman.

Nor did he think it necessary to inform Ora of his sudden decision.

He might work almost double shift to keep her out of his thoughts and

diminish temptation, and he might marry her and continue to love her

passionately; but she would obtain little ascendency over him. He knew

what he wanted; he had trained his will until at times it appeared

formidable even to himself, and he was as nearly the complete male that

regards woman, however wonderful, as the supplementary female as still

survives.

He had few illusions about himself, and it had crossed his mind more

than once, since the hope of divorce had dazzled both of them, that

for a year or two or least there must be a certain amount of friction

between a nature like his and a complex, super-civilised, overgrown

feminine ego like Ora Blake. While he had sat with his legs stretched

out to the fire and his eyes half closed, his body weary, but mentally

alert, he had received certain definite impressions of an independent

almost anarchical mind, contemptuous of the world and its midges save

as they might be of use to herself; of a mind too well-bred ever to

be managing and exacting in any vulgar sense, but inexorable in its

desires and as unscrupulous in their pursuit as her father had been; of

a superlative refinement coupled with a power of intense and reckless

passion found only in women possessing that quality of imagination that

exalts and idealises the common mortal attributes. Moreover, it was a

mind that, the first joy of submission and surrender diminished, would

think for itself.

Until that night when both had dropped the mask for a moment he had

never thought of her as a complicated ego, merely as one from whom

he felt temporarily separated after a union of centuries; and it had

been the reluctant admission that he knew her very little, save as a

gracious woman and his own companion, that had enabled him to school

himself to spend long hours with her alone as before. He had tumbled

blindly into matrimony once, and no matter how much he might love this

woman, to whom he had seemed from the first to be united by a secret

and ancient bond, he was determined none the less to marry the second

time with his eyes wide open.

But although his glimpses of Ora’s winding depths gave him moments of

uneasiness he always fell back upon the complacent reflection that he

was a man, a man, moreover, with a cast-iron will, and that the woman

did not live who would not have to adapt herself to him did he take her

to wife.

Until the day before the party at the mines he had been content to

drift, but a certain moment down in his own mine had given a new and

abrupt turn to both thoughts and purpose. Ida might have spared herself

her agonies of shame: she had not betrayed her love, but she had given

him a distinct impression that she was employing her redoubtable

feminine weapons to reduce him to his old allegiance. He had remembered

for a poignant moment that he once had loved this woman to distraction,

and during that moment he saw her again as the most beautiful and

distracting of her sex. His brief surrender had filled him with fury.

He had no intention of despising himself. From boyhood up he had had

nothing but contempt for the man that did not know his own mind. If

it had not been for this serene confidence in himself, he, who was

constitutionally wary in spite of the secret and wistful springs of

romance in his nature and the apparent suddenness of his bold plunges,

never would have married Ida Hook, nor any woman, until he had sounded

her thoroughly. But he had behaved like any hot-headed and conceited

young fool, and, much as he now admired Ida, it both infuriated him and

appalled him to feel even for a moment toward her as he had in his raw

inexperienced youth.

He therefore made up his mind to go to her like a rational being and

ask her to give him his freedom. They had made a mistake. They were

reasonable members of an advanced civilisation, where mistakes were

recognised and rectified whenever possible. He did not doubt for a

moment that reason and logic must appeal as forcibly to a woman as to

himself.

The door of his wife’s house was opened after the usual delay, and the

maid told him that Mrs. Compton was upstairs in the billiard room “or

somewheres.” He took the stairs three steps at a time lest his courage

evaporate; but drew a long breath of relief when he entered the large

square hall and saw nothing of Ida. He would have rung for the maid,

but reflected that no doubt he had already provided enough gossip

for the republic below stairs without admitting that he did not know

his way round his wife’s house. He was about to knock on each door

in turn when he noticed that one in a corner at the end of the hall

was open and that it led into a narrow passageway. Beyond there was

light, possibly in one of those boudoirs of which he had heard. Mrs.

Murphy would have been sure to have a boudoir, and no doubt Ida, little

disposed as she was to indolence, spent some part of her mornings in it.

He adventured down the passageway that terminated in a large room

full of sunlight. He saw his wife standing in the middle of this room

looking about her with a curious expression of wistfulness. The little

hall was carpeted, but she heard him almost as soon as he saw her; she

would have known those light swift footsteps in a marching army. He was

inside the room before she could reach the doorway and close it behind

her and astonished to see a deep blush suffuse her face. His quick

darting glance took in his surroundings as he shook hands with her. The

room was a nursery.

“I had two beds put in here and have just seen that they were taken

out,” stammered Ida.

Her embarrassment was communicable, but he said gruffly as he walked to

the window, “Didn’t know the Murphys had children.”

“Oh, yes, they had two little ones. Seven in all. I think it odd they

should have left the toys here even if they are rich enough to buy toys

every day. There is something sacred about a child’s toys.”

Ida was merely talking against time, but she hardly could have said

anything better calculated to arrest his attention.

He turned and looked at her in astonishment.

“Do you mean to intimate--that you wish you had children? You?”

Ida’s brain as well as her body was very weary, but it sprang to action

at once. “Oh, yes,” she said intensely. “Oh, yes! And I might have had

two! They would be wonderful in this house.”

“But----” He cast about desperately. “With two children you could not

have gone to Europe.”

“That wouldn’t have mattered.”

“But--don’t you realise that it is this last year of unusual advantages

that has developed you so--so--remarkably? You hated children----”

“And do you suppose it was Europe that made me want children?”

“Oh, of course, nothing is as simple as that. You were taken out of

yourself, out of your narrow self-sufficient little life; all your fine

latent powers were developed----”

“But not altogether by Europe! Still, I don’t deny that it woke me up,

gave me not one new point of view but many, developed me, if you like

that better. Would you like lunch earlier? You get up at such unearthly

hours----”

“I’m not hungry. I want to talk to you. That is what I came for. Won’t

you sit down--no, not here! Let us go where there are comfortable

chairs. I--I am tired.”

“Very well. Let us go down to the library.” As she walked before him he

noted that her superb body, which usually looked as if set with fine

steel springs, was heavy and listless.

The masculine looking room below restored his balance.

“You don’t look as well as usual,” he remarked, as he threw himself

into the deepest of the chairs. “Yesterday was a hard day, and you had

had those men on your hands for----”

“I am tired,” said Ida briefly, “but it doesn’t matter. What do you

want to talk to me about?”

He did not answer for a few moments, then he stood up and thrust his

hands into his pockets and scowled at the carpet. Involuntarily Ida

also rose to her feet and braced herself, crossing her arms over her

breast.

“It is impossible for this to go on,” said Gregory rapidly. “It is

unnatural. People don’t submit to broken lives in these days. I think

you had better get a divorce and be happy. Mowbray seems to be a fine

fellow. Of course no one doubts that he has followed you here. He could

make you happy, and as soon as I am able--in a year or two--I shall

give you a million; in time more.”

“Oh! Oh!”

“You surely cannot want to live for ever like--like--this!”

“I have no desire to marry again. Have you?” She shot the question at

him, every nerve on edge with suspicion.

But the last thing in his mind was to betray Ora, and he answered

promptly. “No. But I am absorbed in my mine, and my life will be more

crowded every year with accumulating interests. You are a woman. You

are young--and--and--you wish for children.”

Ida believed that after her revelation of yesterday he had come to let

her down gently. She determined to throw her all on one heavy stake. If

she lost, at least she would have had the satisfaction of telling him

that she loved him; she had already sacrificed her pride, and there was

a reckless sweetness in the thought of revealing herself absolutely to

this man. When a woman loves a man not quite hopelessly she experiences

almost as much satisfaction in listening to her own confession as to

his.

She drew herself up, her arms still across her breast, and Gregory

thought he had never seen a woman look so dignified and so noble.

“Listen, Gregory,” she said, with no tremor in her voice but deepening

sadness in her eyes, “I regret that I have no children because they

would be yours. I am willing to live and die alone because I have

lost your love. I know how I lost it, but, as I look back over my

crudity and ignorance, I do not see how I could have kept it. You were

immeasurably above and beyond me. Nature, or some mental inheritance,

gave you sensitiveness, refinement, distinction, to say nothing of

brains. I had to achieve all that I am now. I was a raw conceited fool

like thousands of American girls of any class, who think they are

just a little too good for this world. I had ceased to love you in

my inordinate love of myself, and the natural consequence was, that

as I made no attempt to improve myself, I lost you as soon as my halo

of novelty had disappeared. I took for granted, however, that I was

returning from Europe to the old conditions. When I discovered that

you had no such intention I was piqued, astonished, angry. But when

I thought it all out I understood. You were within your rights, and

you have behaved with decency and self-respect. I have nothing but

unmitigated contempt for two people that continue to live together as

a mere matter of habit and convenience. They are the real immoralists

of the world, and the girls that ‘go wrong’ know it and laugh at the

reformers. Of course I never had ceased to love you down deep, but it

took just the course of conduct you pursued to make me known to myself.

I realise that it is hopeless--too late. I never intended to betray

myself, but I did so in an unguarded moment yesterday. Otherwise I

never should have told you all this. I have realised since then that

I have lost you irrevocably, but at least if I cannot be your wife I

will be no man’s, and I shall continue to bear your name--and see you

sometimes.”

Gregory, feeling as if he were being flayed, had dropped upon the edge

of a chair and buried his face in his hands. When she finished he said

hoarsely: “I never dreamed--I never imagined--I thought you incapable

of real feeling----”

“I think I was then. And since--Well, you are only a man, after all,

and I made you think what I chose until yesterday--Do you mean----” she

added sharply, “that you did not guess--did not _know_ yesterday?”

“It never occurred to me. I thought you merely were flirting a

little----”

“Hi!” cried Ida. Then she got back into her rôle. “It doesn’t matter,”

she said with sad triumph. “I am glad I have told you. As for the

future? You have convinced Butte that we are the best of friends. Stay

away if you wish unless I give an entertainment where your absence

would cause too much comment. You don’t want to marry again, but you

may feel yourself as free as air. And one day--when you are worn out,

tired of the everlasting struggle in which you moneymakers work harder

than the day labourer, with his eight-hour laws and freedom from the

terrific responsibilities of money; when you begin to break and want

a home, I will make one for you. There is the doorbell. Lord John is

coming for lunch. I shall give him his dismissal--once for all.”

Gregory stood up and took her hand. He had a vague masculine sense of

unfairness somewhere but he could not begin to define it, and he was as

deeply impressed as discouraged. “You are a grand woman, Ida,” he said.

“This is not an hour that any man forgets. I wish that you might be

happy.”

“Nature never intended that people on this planet should be happy--only

in spots, anyhow. And don’t worry about me. You have put me in the way

of getting a great deal out of this old game we call life, and I am

grateful to you. Good-bye.”

They shook hands and Gregory went out into the hall as the maid was

admitting Lord John. This time the men made no pretence at politeness.

They merely glared and passed.

XXI

The Primo vein had been recovered some time since and Ora had traversed

the fault drift twice and watched the drilling from the station; not

only to assert her rights as mistress of the mine but to experience the

sensations she had anticipated. She soon discovered that when a woman

is in love, and the issue doubtful, other interests fail to provide

sensations. But she went down into the mine every day and roamed

through the older workings. She was tormented and restless, but by no

means without hope; and this being the case she sometimes wondered

why she continued to write to Valdobia as if nothing had occurred to

interfere with their tacit engagement. It was her duty to tell him the

truth, at once, but she switched off all other currents every Saturday

morning and wrote her Roman long gay tantalising letters; being gifted

as a scribe, like so many women, she made them notable with amusing and

enlightening incidents of mining-camp life.

She had not seen Gregory since Monday evening. He had gone suddenly to

Butte on the morning following the visit of the geologists, and had

telephoned her that he should take the afternoon train to the Capital

and no doubt be detained for several days. She had expected that he

would telephone or telegraph from Helena; that he would write was too

much to expect; she had never seen his handwriting. But he had not

recognised her existence.

Four days after his departure she went down into her mine and walked as

far as the ragged opening blasted by the Apex men, thinking of Ida. How

much longer would it be before Mowbray overcame her prejudices, and her

own independent and proud spirit revolted under her husband’s complete

indifference? Few women were given such an opportunity for revenge both

subtle and open as Mowbray was offering to Ida Compton.

It was at this point in her reflections that Ora heard a light

footfall coming down the fault drift of Perch of the Devil. Without

an instant’s hesitation she descended the short ladder that had been

placed between the two drifts for the benefit of the geologists, and

relit her candle. She met Gregory in the little station. He also held

a candle, but he was so startled at the apparition that he dropped it.

She thrust the point of her candlestick into a wooden post.

“I was going over to see you,” he said unsteadily as he picked up

his candle, relighted it, and mechanically followed her example. He

turned abruptly and walked half way up the drift and back, while she

stood still, shivering with anxiety. Something had put his determined

serenity out of joint. A crisis impended. She felt her unsteadiness

and sat down suddenly on the edge of an ore car, fancying this

dimly lighted room and the black passage leading to it looked as a

death-house cell must look on the eve of execution.

Finally she stammered: “What is it? Please tell me?”

He leaned against the wall in front of her. “I am afraid it’s all

up,” he said lifelessly. “I went in on Tuesday to ask Ida to obtain a

divorce. She refused to listen. She has no wish to remarry and will

have none of divorce. Nothing could have been more definite than our

interview.”

“But--but surely in time--if we have patience----”

“There is no hope. Mowbray entered as I left. She intended to dismiss

him at once.”

Ora, without reasoning, of which she was incapable at the moment, felt

that he had been convinced by more than argument and mere words. She

flung her arms over her lap and dropping her head upon them burst into

a wild transport of tears and sobs; she was so unused to all expression

of emotion that she neither knew nor cared how to control it, and the

tears swept out the floodgates that had held her passion in check.

She looked up suddenly and saw Gregory standing over her with twitching

face and clenched hands; and exulting in the complete abandonment of

all the controls that civilisation has bred, she sprang to her feet,

flung herself into his arms and her own arms about his neck. She had

her immediate reward, for he nearly crushed her, and he kissed her

until they both were breathless and reeling.

This was the passion she had read and dreamed of; for once the

realities were commensurate; instinct warned her to postpone argument

and prolong the moment to its utmost. There was room in her brain

for the doubt if such a moment ever could come again, so little of

love-making is wholly unpremeditated. So she clung to him and kissed

him, and in that dim cavern his dark face, so reminiscent of those

great prehistoric races that interested him, looked as he felt,

primeval man that had found his mate.

But, whatever his ancient inheritance, he was the immediate product

of a highly practical civilisation. His keen calculating brain sent a

lightning flash across his passion. He lifted her off her feet and sat

her down on the ore car. Then he took a candlestick in either hand.

“Come to the other station,” he said peremptorily, and led the way to a

less dangerous seclusion.

He was half way up the fault drift before Ora, subdued but rebellious,

stooped mechanically and found the veil that she wore in place of a

hat when in the mines. She followed him slowly. She felt rather than

reasoned that she had missed her opportunity and wished angrily that

she had had lovers and knew better how to manage men. By the time she

reached the shaft station the confusion in her mind had lifted somewhat

and she had arrived at the conclusion that she could not overcome him

in the same way again, but must use her brains. She sat down on the box

and smoothed her hair with apparent unconcern.

Gregory had disposed of the two candlesticks and said, his voice

still unsteady: “There isn’t much to say, but I want to have my last

interview with you in my mine. I cannot get away from here for two or

three days. Will you leave at once?”

“Will you listen to me? I have my right to be heard?”

“What is there to say?”

She clasped her hands in her lap and looked up at him. Gregory

sighed and set his teeth. She looked surpassingly lovely and rather

helpless--women, at their best, always seemed to him pathetic.

“Gregory,” she said, “you don’t doubt that I love you?”

“No. But what is the use? Do you suppose I am going to make you my

mistress--all Montana would know it in less than no time. I’m no

saint, but it wouldn’t work--not for us!”

“But you want me?”

“Oh!” He turned away, then swung round upon her. She had stood up. Her

head was bent forward. “You should help me out!” he cried angrily.

“Can’t you see--it’s you I’m thinking of. Do you suppose I want all

the sporting women in Butte making horrible jokes about you--all your

friends cutting you? What’s a man good for if he doesn’t protect a

woman?”

“Love affairs have lasted for years without being found out.”

“Precious seldom. And we are not buried in a big city. I must live

out here and you would either have to live out here too, or I should

be sneaking into your house in Butte. A business-like intrigue!

Remember I lived somewhat before I married. Sentiment and romance soon

evaporate----”

“Oh, yes, that is always what I have thought when I have read the

American novelists’ attempts to portray what they call a ‘guilty love’.

The only word that expresses it delicately is _liaison_, and the

setting should be foreign as well. There is no background here. We are

still under the drab shadow of Puritanism. I have heard it estimated

that twenty-five thousand American women go abroad every year to

indulge in a fleeting _liaison_ that gives them courage to endure the

desperately material and commonplace life of this country for another

year. You don’t understand that because you never have been in Europe.

But Egypt--Italy--in Southern Europe anywhere--with its unbridled

beauties of nature and its far more poetic beauties that centuries of

art have given it--and a thousand years of love behind us--Oh, cannot

you imagine how wonderful love would be? Do you think _I_ should ever

want to come back?”

Gregory was staring at her. “Do you mean,” he stammered, “that you

would sacrifice your reputation openly--your future--do you care enough

for that?”

“I mean I love you so exclusively that I wish I had a thousand times

more to sacrifice.”

“But--but--there are always Americans travelling--and you know many

Europeans----”

“They are always easy to avoid. There are villas with walls, and pink

flowers on top of the walls. And we could travel and see the wonders of

art when the tourist season was over. Nor would I monopolise you. You

could have the society of men of brains and achievement everywhere.”

He continued to stare at her radiant wistful face. He had known that

she loved him, but it had never occurred to him that she would be

willing to give up the world for his sake. She was a proud woman, an

aristocrat, she had an exceptional position everywhere; the great world

when they parted stood ready to offer its consolations.

She had unrolled a heavenly vision! His mind had revolted from debasing

her to the status of what is euphemistically known in the West as

“sporting women”; he also remembered the immediate disillusionments

of his younger manhood and wondered if the hideousness of Butte had

been responsible. The Mediterranean with its ancient civilisations

flourishing and forgotten before the historic period, Egypt, full-grown

offspring of a still more ancient but vanished civilisation--both

called to that archæological instinct so closely allied to the

geological, made him fancy he heard faint ancestral voices. Ora’s

eyes were holding his, and her gaze was as powerful as his own. For

the moment he no longer was a son of the newest section of the newest

world. The turquoise waters of the Mediterranean spread before him, but

he saw it alive with galleys----

He jerked his eyes away, folded his arms and stared downward. He must

think rationally, not with vapours in his brain. It might be that he

would be more than fool to sacrifice to any consideration the one

chance for happiness in perfect union that life would offer him.

Suddenly he became aware that he was staring at the rocky floor of his

mine, of its first level; the flickering candle flames revealed bits

of bright yellow metal. And below was the second level with its superb

shoot of copper ore ten feet wide. And below, on the third level, still

was the vein far more beautiful than virgin gold. And down--down--in

those vast unlocked caverns--what mysteries--what wonder-ores might not

the earth harbour for him alone to find and name----

“What are you thinking of?” cried Ora sharply. Then she threw out her

arms wildly. “I know! I know! It is those accursed ores! Oh, God! What

have I in me, I, a mere woman, to compensate for the loss of a mine? I

was a fool--Of course! Of course!”

But Gregory, although his blood had frozen in his veins at the horrid

vision of a permanent divorce from his mine, would make no such

admission.

“Ora,” he said quietly, “it would be very wonderful--for about three

months. You would despise me if I were content to dawdle away my life

in an olive grove, or throw away my best years and these great energies

nature has given me, doing nothing in that old civilisation in which

I could find no place. And in time you would resent the weakness that

had stranded you with no recourse in life but myself. That sort of

thing has never been a success and never will be, because nature did

not make man to live on love alone, and it is much the same with the

intellectual woman. It wouldn’t work. Not with us. I have known from

the beginning that it must be marriage or nothing. And Ida would not

divorce me if I ran away with you. She would be entitled to her revenge

and she would take it.” He leaned forward and signalled the station

call. “Please take the skip when it comes. I am going below.” And he

ran down the ladder.

XXII

Ora got into the skip and was whisked to the surface.

She drew the veil over her head and face, wishing dimly that she had

gone home through the mines; but a moment later the veil fell to her

shoulders unnoticed. As she crossed the Apex claim she was vaguely

aware that someone, almost in her path, lifted his hat. She bowed

automatically, feeling like those poor wound-up royalties who must

smile graciously upon their loyal people even though a cancer devour

the body or the brain reel with sorrow.

Whalen, abnormal in vanity and conceit though he was, took no

offence; not only was this in his estimation the one great lady of

the Western annex, but he was startled by the expression in her fixed

eyes of anguish, terror, and surprise. He had seen Gregory Compton go

down into his mine not a half an hour ago, and it was easy for his

fictionised if unimaginative mind to conjure up a hazy picture of the

scene underground. He turned very red, partly from gratification at

being so close to human passion and pain, but more from the knowledge

that he shortly could offer all the elements for another and a still

more dramatic crisis. At the same time he could do the one woman he

admired in this wilderness a good turn and heal his cankerous ache for

vengeance.

Ora went on to her little house and sank into a chair before the

burnt-out logs. Her body felt as if it were a vessel into which

had been poured all the waters of woman’s bitterness and despair.

Nevertheless, her predominant sensation was astonishment. For a year

she had lived in a fool’s paradise, indissolubly mated with Gregory

Compton. It was only in the moment when the idea of his own divorce

flashed into her mind that she realised she had meant to have him for

ever, that her imagination had been a mere playground on which she had

romped, and abruptly abandoned when she saw reality standing at the

gate.

Since that day, interrupted only by the fevers and doubts of love,

she had accepted with joy her predestined fate as the visible mate

of Gregory Compton. Else what did it all mean? She had counted

on marriage, but that respectable solution had faded into utter

insignificance as soon as the shock of Ida’s refusal had passed. To

fling the world aside, to regard it as a mere whirling speck in the

void, followed as a matter of course. She and this man would fill all

space.

And she had lost. It was over. _Over. Over._ For a time the

astonishment consequent upon the mental reiteration of this fact held

her. Her mind, quick, alert, sinuous as she had always found it, was

unable to readjust itself. How could anything be over that manifestly

had been created to go on for ever? What, then, did it all mean: that

mutual recognition when they had sat together that night in Butte,

that long mental obsession, this later perfect understanding, this

indubitable power to find in each other complete happiness? Over. And

by the man’s decree. How odd. How odd. And what a tragic waste.

She knew that the mine had pulled him, but she was too much the woman

to take a mine seriously. There had been some other reason. He loved

her; she never doubted that. He had resisted--why? She groped back

through her limited experience, wondering if the trouble were that

she had had so little. Life had not begun with her until a year ago.

She had been a mere student, deliberately living in the unreal, often

deluding, world of books, the worst of all preparations for life.

Some women were independent of experience, knew men by instinct. She

felt that Ida, in a similar situation, would have had her way. She

had not managed cleverly; no doubt with all her charm and her natural

allurement for men, even a certain acquired coquetry, she was one of

those women that could theorise brilliantly, but failed utterly to

manage their own affairs at critical moments.

She was well aware that she had not been developing along ideal

lines of late, particularly since she had come out here with the

unadmitted intention of stealing her friend’s husband. By all the laws

of tradition she should be wicked all through. Pride, diffidence,

fastidiousness--one or all, she was in no condition to decide--had

prevented her from playing the deliberate rôle of siren. She sighed and

wished that life could be played upon the formula adopted by so many

brilliant novelists: a steady unrelenting development of character upon

strictly logical lines and by means of cunningly created situations,

that was as much like life as a mother’s formula would be for the

thoughts and deeds of her children at a given hour a year hence.

Ora did not know that most people in their rare moments of honest

introspection find themselves singularly imperfect. She had looked for

greater consistency in her complex recesses; assuming that if she made

up her mind to take the husband of any woman, and that woman her best

friend, she would be wholly hard and wicked, and, for the sake of the

result, quite willing to achieve this consistent imperfection. And such

hardness would be the surest of all solaces in the event of failure.

She felt neither hard nor nearly as wicked as she should, but she did

recognise the fact that if she had one more chance she would win by

hook or crook.

Her thoughts swung to Ida. What had she said to Gregory in that last

decisive interview? Ida was as clever as the devil. She would watch

her chance and make just the right appeal at the right moment. Gregory

could be ruthless to the woman of whom he had wearied or to the woman

he loved, but if his wife played upon his honour, his Western chivalry,

his sense of fair play, and reiterated her own rights--to her would he

lower his flag if it struck the life out of his own heart, and left

himself nothing to feed the deep passion and romance of his nature for

the rest of his life.

In any case Ida had won.

Once more Ora wished that she had gone to work when she found herself

penniless after her father’s death. She would have developed normally,

and it was unthinkable that in the little world of Butte she would not

have met Gregory Compton while he was free. Then not only would she be

happy today but know nothing of those abysmal depths in her soul which

she execrated while yielding to them and lamenting that for the time

being they were no worse. Love may be divine when all goes well, or

one is born into the cult of the martyr, but when it comes too late

to passionate natures associated with virile and accomplished minds,

it can be the very spawn of hell. Ora’s regret that she was not of the

breed of those finished wantons of history that rose to fame on the

shattered hearts of men was born of expediency. Could she have been

given her choice and Gregory Compton she would have elected to be fine

and noble, consummating the lofty dictates of her superior intellectual

endowment. Not yet had she realised that lacking a ruthless centralised

ideal, rarely allied to brilliant intellects, the souls of women even

more than those of men (who have less time and more poise) are the

playthings of Circumstance.

She became aware that her Chinaman was crossing the room, and before

she could refocus her wandering mental vision and intercept him, he had

opened the front door and admitted Professor Whalen.

XXIII

Ida had broken a dinner engagement and sat alone in her library. She

knew that Gregory had passed through Butte that day on his way from

Helena to Pony; she had seen him leave the Block where his lawyers

had their offices and jump into a waiting taxi. He was not the man to

take a cab for anything but an imminent train. She had rushed home,

but he had neither called nor telephoned. She reasoned that he would

be more than man if he were not reluctant to see her again after their

last embarrassing interview, that there was no cause for fresh doubts,

and that there was literally nothing for her to do at present but

continue to play her waiting game. But she felt both sad and nervous,

and wondered if it were in her to despair, to “cut and run” like

other women; or whether it might not be wise to absent herself for a

time. Gregory was the sort of man to appreciate delicacy, and after

an absence of two months they would meet quite naturally. She could

visit Yellowstone and Glacier Park, and send him pleasant impersonal

postcards.

But although she hesitated to acknowledge it, she was tired of her

waiting game, she wished that “fate would get a move on”, and she had

left her husband once with unforeseen results. She leaned her elbows

on her knees and pressed her hands against her face. She had always

cherished a high opinion of her cleverness in regard to men, but she

was nonplussed. For a woman of her resource there should be some

alternative to waiting. She knew that she had made a deep impression

on her husband in that momentous interview, but who could say that he

had not deliberately put the memory of it out of his mind? Certainly

there was no sign that it had softened him or paved the way for her

reinstatement into his life.

She was alarmed at her waning self-control. During these last few days

she barely had been able to play her part in society; the people at

the various functions she had attended had seemed to her confused and

absent mind like marionettes that she could sweep off the stage with

her arm, and she had retreated into her shell lest she insult them

irreparably.

She brought her heavy brows together. Could there be another woman

after all? Gregory was cleverer than any detective. Why should it occur

to him to suggest divorce, he a man so absorbed in a mine that he had

forgotten how to live--merely out of consideration for a discarded wife

whose existence he generally managed to forget? It was certainly odd,

and its idiosyncrasies grew and swelled as she brooded. She wondered

if she had been a fool. But who in heaven’s name could the woman be?

Of course it was only a passing fancy, but could she wait, _could she

wait_?

She was aroused by a slight cough, discreet but full of subtle

insolence. She sprang to her feet, and Whalen smiled as he saw her

drawn face and bloodshot eyes. He stood just within the door, and held

a cap in his hand. He wore a light automobile coat; a pair of goggles

only half covered his bulging brow. His upper teeth were clamped down

over his lower lip, a habit when steadying his nerves. Ida thought she

had never seen him look so hideous, so like a mongrel cur.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“How gracious you are! How like Mrs. Blake, who would not forget her

manners if she----”

“I’ve got no manners for your sort. Get out.”

“Oh, not yet. I’ve something to say. I’ve waited for over a year, but

my time has come----”

“You’ll go out the way you went last time if you don’t say what you’ve

got to say pretty quick and get out by yourself.”

Whalen looked over his shoulder nervously, and measured the distance

to the front door. He had asked leave of the maid to announce himself,

and, when she had disappeared, reopened the door and left it ajar.

“It won’t take me long,” he said grimly. “It took me a little longer to

tell Mrs. Blake, for she was hard to convince; but she _was_ convinced

before I left. It is merely this: I saw you go into Lord John Mowbray’s

rooms on Monday night shortly after ten o’clock and come out at

half-past one.”

“Oh, you did, did you? I had a feeling all the time there was a sneak

in the neighbourhood. Well, much good your spying will do you. Lord

John was at the Country Club until three in the morning and everybody

knows it.”

She spoke calmly, but she was profoundly disturbed. She continued,

however, in the same tones of cutting contempt, for she saw that he was

taken aback, “I merely misunderstood an invitation of Lord John’s for

a bridge party. I thought it was for that night, and although I was

surprised to find myself the first and Lord John not there, I sat down

to wait and fell asleep. I had had a hard day. I only condescend to

explain,” she continued witheringly, “because you are as venomous as a

mad dog and it is as well to muzzle you at once.”

“I don’t believe a word of that yarn, and neither will anyone else. I

certainly managed to convince Mrs. Blake----”

“Not she. She must have laughed in your face----”

“Oh no! Not Mrs. Blake! But I will admit that it was not easy to make

her believe ill of you. Perhaps I should not have succeeded, but when a

woman is eager to believe----” He laughed and shrugged his shoulders;

but once more he cast a quick glance at the line of retreat. The heavy

library table was between them.

“What the devil do you mean?” Ida spoke roughly, but her heart began to

hammer. She felt a sudden impulse to run away, but she stood rigidly

and glared at him. “Here!” she continued, “come to the point. Spit

out your poison. What particular object had you in trying to set my

best friend against me? It would have been more like you to run to a

newspaper.”

“That later. I wanted to do Mrs. Blake a good turn and at the same

time let her be the one to tell your husband that he could secure his

freedom without further delay----”

“What do you mean? What do you mean?” Ida’s eyes were staring as if

they saw a vision of herself at the stake; she tossed off her pride

as she would a hampering cloak. “Ora! Ora! Oh, not Ora! You liar!”

she screamed. “Prove what you said quick----” But he saw that she had

caught the edge of the table and that her body was swaying.

“Oh, neither will deny it now,” he replied in a tone of deadly quiet.

“She went out there to be near him, no doubt of that; and he’s spent

hours on end in that bungalow. I went to Helena and back with him and I

guessed that something was up, for he was glummer and more disagreeable

than usual; and this afternoon when I saw her come up out of his mine

I guessed they had had a painful scene and parted. So I told her she

had the game in her own hands, and that I’d go on the stand and swear

to what I saw. No husband would believe anything but the truth, nor

this town either. You might prove that your lord made a fool of you and

amused himself elsewhere, but you’re done for all the same; and I guess

Mr. Compton would manage his divorce all right. Then two people that

are madly in love will be happy----”

Ida’s strength rushed back and the world turned scarlet. She picked

up a heavy bronze from the table and hurled it at him. But Whalen was

expecting a physical assault in some form. He ducked and fled. When she

reached the open door he was not in sight.

XXIV

Ora watched the clock until twenty minutes after eleven.

The miners changed shift promptly, and the last should have gone down

the Primo shaft by a quarter past at the latest. The shaft house would

be empty, as no hoisting was being done on the night shift.

She turned out the light in her living-room, wrapped herself in a dark

lodenmantel, a long cape with a hood that she had worn while climbing

in Bavaria, and let herself out. She walked through the grove to the

edge of the bluff above her camp and stood for a few moments, listening

intently. Some ten minutes since she had heard the warning shriek of an

automobile horn, but the garage of her manager, who had motored Whalen

into Butte, was on the flat, and he had had time either to go down into

the mine or climb to his own cottage.

The moon was at the full and the scene as sharply outlined as by day,

although less animated. Save for the usual raucous noises of a mining

camp the only sign of life was in the saloon. Some one was playing a

pianola, and through the open door she saw men standing at the bar. For

a moment she was tempted to take the surface path across the camps; but

the risk was too great. Some one was sure to be abroad, and although

she had been willing to brave the scorn of the world when there was no

apparent alternative, she shrank from the plain Saxon the miners would

use if they saw her. From Gregory’s shaft house she could reach his

cabin by the path behind the abandoned cut.

A light was burning in her shaft house. She was not expert enough to

descend the ladder candle in hand, and for a moment faltered above the

darkness of the well; she had not been down before at night. Then she

reflected that it was always night in the mines and descended without

further hesitation.

At the foot of the shaft the usual station was one with the chamber

left after removing the first large deposit of ore. They had merely

cut through the vein at this point without stoping, and the great

excavation had a lofty roof. Ora struck a match and lit a candle

near by. On the day of the geologists’ visit a number of miner’s

candlesticks had been thrust into what little wood there was in the

chamber, and the candles were but half burnt out. Then she lit the one

she had brought in her pocket. Accustomed as she was by this time to

the route underground by chamber and gallery to the Perch mine, she

always picked her way carefully, particularly down the first drift;

her lessees, impatient at the leanness of the connecting vein, and not

wishing to spend either the time or the money to sink the shaft another

hundred feet, had understoped, and the holes were ill-covered.

She crossed the large black cavern toward the first of these tunnels,

or drifts, sweeping the candle about her head, and then holding

it downward, for she always feared cave-ins. The room was almost

untimbered, owing to the hardness of the rock.

She had almost reached the mouth of the drift, when she paused

suddenly, listened intently, and then blew out her candle. Some one

was on the ladder. It was one of the miners, no doubt. Something had

detained him above ground, and not daring to summon the shaft house

man, he was sneaking down the ladder. He would go on down to the second

level of the mine. Ora stood motionless, her hood pulled over her white

face. Her miners were good average men, but the saloon flourished, and

was no doubt responsible for the present delinquency.

Then once more she listened intently. The upper part of her body

stiffened like a startled animal’s. Whoever was coming down was making

his first descent by foot; not only was his progress slow, but he was

breathing heavily, and hesitating between rungs, as if it were his

first experience of an inclined ladder. Miners hate the shaft ladder,

and will resort to any subterfuge to avoid it, but they are experts

in “negotiating” it nevertheless. No doubt this was some green hand,

recently employed. Or possibly the man was drunk.

Then suddenly Ora turned cold with the chill of the mine itself, a

mere physical attribute that her warm blood had never deigned to

notice before. A form was slowly coming into view below the high roof

of the cavern, and although it was little more than a blot on the

general blackness, Ora’s keen eyes, accustomed to the faint relief

given by the candle near the shaft, noted as it descended further

that it covered more of the ladder than it should. Miners are almost

invariably thin and they wear overalls. This person wore a heavy cape

like her own. But it was not alone the garment, which any miner would

scorn, that betrayed the sex of the invader; it may have been the

physical awkwardness, the shallow breathing, or some subtle psychical

emanation--or all--that warned Ora of the approach not only of a woman

but of a malignant force.

And this woman was following her. There was no doubt in her mind of

that. She suffered a moment or two of furious unreasoning terror as

she crouched against the wall and watched that shadow against a shadow

slowly descend the final rungs of the ladder. Her first impulse had

been to flee down the drift, but there was danger of falling into one

of the gouge holes and disabling herself. She dared not relight her

candle.

Shaking, terrified as she never had been in her life--for she was

normally brave, and it was not a normal woman she feared but that

aura of hate and lust for vengeance--undecided, putting up a frantic

prayer that Gregory would come to her rescue, she pulled the hood over

her face and almost sank to her knees. The woman, breathing heavily,

reached the last rung and touched the ground as warily as a cat. For a

moment she stood drawing in deep breaths like sighs, but which escaped,

to tormented ears, like a hiss. Ora, her eyelids almost meeting over

the intense concentration of her gaze, saw the woman fling back the

mantle that covered her, throw out her arms as if to relax the muscles

after the strain of the descent. Then she turned suddenly, snatched the

candlestick from the wall and held it above her head.

For the moment Ora thought her heart had stopped. The woman was Ida.

Her heavy lowered brows were like a heavy band across the white

ghastliness of her face. Her eyes glittered horribly. Her lips were a

mere tight line. Her black hair, loosened, fell over her face. Ora’s

hypnotised gaze tore itself from those slowly moving eyes and lowered

itself instinctively to Ida’s right hand. It held the stiletto she had

given her in Genoa. The slanting rays of the candle fell on the jewels

of the hilt. Then she knew that Ida had followed her down into the mine

to kill her.

Her courage came back as quickly as it had fled. Ora’s brain might

be democratic but her soul was haughty. The friendship of the past

eighteen months between herself and this woman suddenly shaped itself

as forced and artificial, and she was filled with a cold surprise and

anger. _Who_ was Ida Hook that she should presume to question Ora

Stratton? Similar reflections, no doubt, stiffened many a noble when on

his way to the guillotine at the behest of the _canaille_.

Ora was beyond the ray of the candle at present but Ida was beginning

to move forward, her eyes almost blank in spite of their brilliancy,

moving from side to side, striving to pierce the darkness, her head

bent forward to catch the slightest sound. It was evident that she had

seen Ora go into the shaft house, and knew that she could not be far

off.

Ora took the automatic from the bag at her waist, pointed it at the

roof of the cave and fired twice. The din was terrific in that confined

space. Ida shrieked, dropped the stiletto and candle, and flung her

arms about her head. Ora hastily lighted two other candles, and then

retreated against the wall. She believed that the terrible inhibition

in Ida’s tormented mind was shattered, but she kept the automatic in

her hand, nevertheless.

The reverberations died away and once more the mine was as silent as

only a deserted level of a mine can be. Ida raised her head and saw

Ora. She gave a strangled cry and moved forward a step. Then her arms

fell heavily to her side. She did not even pick up the dagger. The

inhuman tension of her mind relaxed, the body barely had force enough

to hold itself together.

“I came here to kill you,” she said. “But I can’t do it. I’ve been mad

for hours, and I wish I could have found you in bed as I thought I

would. I could have killed you then. But I saw you come down here--Have

you told him?”

“No. He was down in the mine until eleven. I was on my way to tell

him--to break down his resistance tonight!”

“His resistance?” Ida raised her head. She had lost the pitch necessary

for murder, but her mind began to recover its alertness and her

drooping body to set its springs in motion. “What do you mean by that?

I thought he was in love with you.”

Ora laughed. She was filled with an utter despair, but the knife was

still in Ida and she could turn it round. “Oh, yes, make no doubt of

that. He loves me and will as long as he lives----”

“Not much he won’t!” roared Ida. “If I’ve been too quick for you you’ll

never tell him now, and he practically gave me his word the other day

that he’d never even ask me for a divorce again. That means you go and

go quick, and if you think Gregory will have nothing to do but sit down

and nurse your memory----”

The blood flew to Ora’s head and she hastily dropped the automatic into

her bag. “I’ll not go!” she said. “And what is more I shall tell him.

When Gregory knows that you spent three hours in Mowbray’s rooms at

night----”

“Mowbray was not there! He was at the Country Club----”

“_Was_ he?”

“Yes, and it can be proved. Moreover, you know me well enough----”

“It doesn’t matter what can be proved or what I believe. You waited for

Mowbray--Do you suppose that Gregory--or any court of law----”

“My God!” cried Ida. “You! You! I think it was that drove me off my

head more than the prospect of disgrace and losing Gregory. You! What

in God’s name is possessing you? I always knew that you would be the

concentrated essence of all damn fool women that ever lived when you

did fall in love, but I never believed it was in you to do anything

dishonourable----”

“And would you have believed that you, the concentrated essence of all

that is cool, deliberate, calculating, would ever be inspired to commit

murder? And for a man? What’s the use of talking? People possessed by

love either are wholly themselves while it lasts, or are abnormal and

should not be held accountable even to the law. I suppose this means

that you too love Gregory Compton?”

“Yes it does!” cried Ida, the more vehemently because it shamed her

to put this unwonted weakness into words. “I do, damn it all! I do. I

thought I was immune, but I guess we are all born with the microbe and

it bites when the soil is good and ready.” Her anger had vanished,

for in spite of Ora’s defiance she knew that she was master of the

situation. She kicked the stiletto contemptuously aside, clasped her

hips with her large firm hands and threw back her shoulders. “Now!” she

said, “admit right here that you know I didn’t go to Mowbray’s rooms

for any old intrigue. That kind of thing isn’t in me and you know it.”

“I will confess I was surprised--I refused to believe it at first--Oh,

I suppose I don’t. But it doesn’t matter----”

“Are you ready to come with me this minute to Gregory and tell him that

yarn--knowing that I can prove Mowbray wasn’t there--I say _go with

me_--not by yourself.”

Ora made no reply. She was beaten but she was not ready to admit it.

“You may bet your life on one thing,” continued Ida. “You go with me

or you don’t go at all, for I’ll stick to you like wet paint until

this thing is settled once for all. Now just tell me what you meant a

while back by Gregory’s resistance? When you found I wouldn’t consent

to a divorce--of course you put him up to ask me, you traitorous little

white devil--did you want him to elope with you?”

“Yes I did!”

“And he wouldn’t!”

“He--he would not sacrifice me----”

“Shucks! Where did you want him to go? To Europe?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord! And what did you think you were going to do with him over

there? Spoon in orange groves for forty years?”

“There are several thousand resources in Europe besides orange

groves--but you would never understand----”

“Oh, don’t I understand? It’s I that does understand, not you, or you

would never have made such an asinine proposition to Gregory Compton.

Why on earth didn’t you propose some place with _mines_--Mexico,

Alaska, China--Then you might have stood some show--but

Europe--Gregory--Do you remember those American business men that

always looked as if they had left their minds in an office at the top

of a thirty-story building, and their bodies were being led round by a

string? The vision of Gregory astray in Europe for the rest of his life

would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Talk about the conceit of

man. It isn’t a patch on that of a woman when she gets the bug inside

her head that she can be ‘everything’ to a man. I can manage Gregory

till doomsday when I get him back, but you’d lose him inside of six

months no matter which way you got him----”

“That couldn’t be true! I recognised that he was mine--_mine_--the

night we met before I left----”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, yes, I met him once before I went abroad with you--we talked for

an hour----”

“And he was the man you wrote those letters to in Europe----”

“Yes.”

“And I your most intimate friend!”

“I never sent them, and you did not care for him then----”

“Oh, I don’t see you apologising if you had turned heaven into hell.

You made up your mind then to have him, I suppose?”

“No. And not even when I came out here. I only wanted to be with

him--know him a little better--have that much--Oh, I couldn’t make you

understand any more than that I can suffer as much as if I were the

best of women who had lost her husband by death. It was only after

Mowbray came--there seemed a prospect----”

“Well, I don’t know that I blame you so much, for I certainly bluffed

it pretty well. I can forgive you for that but not for meaning to make

me out a strumpet and send me to the muck heap, disgraced for the rest

of my life. Well, come along. Let us go straight to Gregory and let him

decide.”

Ora did not move.

“It’s either that or you go back to Butte with me tonight and start for

Europe tomorrow morning.”

“I know when I am beaten. I will leave. And don’t imagine that you have

won because you are in the right. We have emerged from the dark ages of

superstition, and we know that the wicked are not punished if they are

strong enough. Nor are the virtuous rewarded for mere virtue--not once

in ten thousand times. You have won because you are stronger than I.

That is all.”

“It’s enough for me.”

Ora laughed. “Do you really believe that you can win him back? He’ll

not forget me, because I can always fire his imagination. He is as

indifferent to you as only a man can be when the woman is an old story.”

“That was a nasty one! But I’m not worrying. I have been at a

disadvantage since I got back, thinking my only rival was a hole in

the ground. But take this from me, Ora: when a woman knows where she

stands, and has the inside track, and has her nerve with her, the man

has no show whatever. Nor the other woman. I’ll get him back all right.

And he’ll forget you. That’s a man’s long suit.”

“We’ll neither of us ever know, so it doesn’t matter. I shall never see

him again. That is all that matters to me.”

“And Valdobia?”

“I shall marry him. I suppose--after a while.”

“I don’t mind saying that he is much too good for you.”

“Possibly. And he’ll love me the more.”

“And shall you tell him of this little interlude?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, I always have maintained that the woman who confessed anything

to a man was a fool, but it certainly is a queer mix up.”

“I don’t know that I should so much mind telling him, after all. Men

are too practical to resent any but the literal infidelity. And he is

the only person living that understands me. Gregory does not and never

would care to. Why could not I have had this madness for the one man

who is really fitted to be my mate--whose ideas of life are my own, who

has so much the same order of mind? Why should I love Gregory Compton,

a man I not only cannot marry, but with whom I never could find a real

companionship. My God! Why? Why?”

“There are several ways of getting ahead of life,” said Ida drily, “and

one is not asking ‘Why’ too often. That’s just one of her little traps

to keep you discontented. You and Gregory Compton! It certainly is

funny. What did you talk about anyway?”

Ora threw out her arms and laughed wildly. “Ores. Ores. Ores. I tried

to interest him in many of the things that interested me. He didn’t

even try to understand what I was driving at. One night I offered to

read to him--I had a lively new volume of memoirs in mind--he asked

if I had any work on copper. I read to him for three hours from a

book called ‘The Copper Mines of the World,’ technicalities and all.

Of course he had read it before, but it seemed to delight him. We

literally had no common meeting ground but ores, but we loved each

other madly. Oh, don’t tell me that it was mere passion!” she broke out

as angrily as if Ida had interrupted her. “Valdobia is attractive in

far more ways and better looking. Gregory has met many women.--If that

were all we should have bored each other long since--we never could

have held each other’s imaginations while apart.--I tell you it is some

deep primary bond--something that older races perhaps could explain.

Why should we meet at all in this life----”

“I guess when we understand all the different brands of love we’ll

vaccinate and be immune. Shut your teeth, Ora, and take your medicine.

And for heaven’s sake let us get out of this damp hole. I’ll help you

and Custer pack and we’ll go to Butte in the car I came out in. Have I

got to go up that ladder!”

“No, we’ll go over to the Perch mine and ring for the skip there. My

engineer is not on duty during the ‘graveyard shift.’”

XXV

On the following morning Ida, having seen Ora on the train bound for

Chicago, went at once to a public garage, rented the touring car she

had used the night before, and was driven out to the mines. She walked

up to the cabin on the crest of Perch of the Devil and, finding it

empty, summoned a miner who was lounging near and bade him call Mr.

Compton. The man asked to be allowed to use the telephone in the

office, obtained connection with the second level of the mine, and

announced in a few moments that the boss was on his way up.

Ida, who had dropped wearily into a chair, merely nodded as Gregory

entered. He was as pale as a dark man can be, and his voice when he

spoke sounded as if he had been running.

“What is it?” he demanded. “Has anything happened----”

“To Ora? Nothing, except that she is on her way East and to Europe.

Tired, no doubt, but quite well.”

Gregory drew a short sigh of relief, and sat down before his table,

shading his eyes with his hand. “Well?” he asked. “What is it?”

“I haven’t come out here to make a scene, or even to reproach you. I

believe that I should have the self-restraint to ignore the subject

altogether if it were not for that man, Whalen. Some one must put an

extinguisher on him at once and you are the one to do it. That is why

I am obliged to tell you that I found out yesterday about you and Ora.

I had begun to believe there must be some woman in the case but I had

not the least suspicion of Ora. I not only believed her to be the soul

of honour, but I thought she was really in love with the Marchese

Valdobia, a Roman who has everything to offer that a woman of her type

demands, and to marry whom she had demanded a divorce from Mark. She

has been tacitly engaged to him ever since we left Europe.”

Ida saw the muscles in Gregory’s long body stiffen as if he were about

to spring, and his eyes glitter through the lattice of his fingers.

But he made no comment, and after giving him time to assimilate her

information, she added more gently:

“Console yourself with the reflection that she would have thrown him

over for you. But she knows now what a mistake she would have made. Ora

is one of those atavistic Americans that are far more at home in Europe

than in the new world. She has gone where she belongs and Valdobia is

her man.”

She paused again. He was still silent, and she continued less fluently:

“Now I come to the unpleasant part for myself. To begin at the

beginning: I made an enemy of little Whalen before I went abroad. He

had the sublime impudence to kiss me one day, and I simply took him by

the back of his neck and the seat of his pants and threw him out of the

window. He has had it in for me ever since.”

In spite of the various emotions raging within him, Gregory laughed

aloud at the picture. The atmosphere felt clearer. Ida went on with

more confidence:

“Of course you know that Lord John Mowbray followed me here. He wanted

me to get a divorce and marry him, as Valdobia had planned with Ora.

I liked him well enough, but even if I had been free it never would

have occurred to me to marry him, and no one knew better than he that

I didn’t care a copper cent for him. His hope after he came here--a

hope in which he was encouraged by Ora--was that, as you were so loudly

indifferent, pride might drive me to leave you and make a brilliant

marriage. Well, I was tempted for a moment. It was on the night of the

day I had been down in the mine with you. I believed that I had given

myself away absolutely, offered myself and been refused as casually as

if I had been some woman of the streets; told you almost in so many

words that I loved you and been invited with excruciating politeness to

go to the devil.

“Well, that night I nearly went off my head. I had a whole mind, for

a few moments, to ring up Mowbray and tell him that I would get my

freedom and leave the country for ever. But that passed. I couldn’t

have done it, and I knew it, in spite of the blood pumping in my head.

I went out for a walk, for I had smashed a few things already. Then the

mad impulse came to me to call on Mowbray. I knew that I’d treat him

no better than I had treated Whalen if he so much as tried to kiss me.

But I wasn’t afraid. He was too keen on marrying me to take any risks.

What I wanted was to do something real devilish--to be more elegant,

something quite the antithesis of all that is _comme il faut_. So I

went. Mowbray wasn’t there. He had gone to the dance at the Country

Club. I sat down to wait for him and fell asleep. When I awoke it was

after one o’clock and I was still alone. I can tell you I got out

pretty quick. I had slept the blood out of my head and I felt like a

fool. I bribed the Jap not to tell Mowbray or anyone else.

“Well, the point of all this is--and the only reason I have told

you--Whalen saw me go in and waited for me to come out. He believed

that he had found his chance for revenge at last. No doubt he would

have told you on the way to Helena, but he hasn’t the spunk of a road

agent at the wrong end of a gun. So he took his tale to Ora when he got

back.--But before I go any further I want you to say that you believe

I had no wrong motive in going to Mowbray’s rooms. Of course a hundred

people could testify that he did not leave the Country Club until three

o’clock, but that is not the point with you.”

“I believe you,” said Gregory. He was intensely interested.

Ida drew a long sigh and the colour came back to her face. Her eyes,

heavy with fatigue, sparkled. “Well! Whalen was all for drinking his

cup of revenge down to the dregs. It wasn’t enough to spring a mine

under me, he must see what I looked like when it blew up the first

time. After he told Ora he posted into Butte and managed to get into

my house unannounced--that maid has been fired. I was in the library

on the other side of the room. The doorway was good enough for him. He

told me. Some time I’ll tell you all I felt. After he had lit out with

the Venus of Milo flying after him, I went stark mad. I made up what

mind I had left to kill Ora and kill her quick.”

“What?” Gregory sat up and stared at her, his eyes wide open. And,

astounded as he was, the immortal vanity of man thrilled responsively

to the reckless and destructive passions he had inspired in these two

remarkable women.

“I got a touring car and arrived at the foot of her hill--a little

after eleven it was, I guess. There was a light in her living-room, and

I made up my mind to wait until I was sure she was alone and in her

bedroom. Then I intended to get in somehow or other and kill her with

that stiletto she gave me in Genoa. It was a notion of hers that I had

been one of the wicked dames of the Renaissance, and I just naturally

took the hint. While I was waiting the light went out and almost

immediately I saw her hurry down the path that led to her claim and go

into her shaft house. I knew on the instant that she was going to you,

and that she took that route to avoid being seen. My mind could grasp

that much in spite of the fixed idea in it--that she was on her way to

tell you Whalen’s story. This was true as I found out afterwards. She

went that night, partly because she couldn’t keep it any longer, partly

because she wanted to tell you when you were alone in your cabin at

night and she could also bind you hand and foot with that Lorelei hair

of hers. It takes the hyper-civilised super-refined Oras to stick at

nothing when their primitive instincts loosen up.

“Well--I went into the shaft house, and listened until I no longer

could hear her on the ladder. Then I followed. Glory! Shall I ever

forget going down that ladder? I felt as if every muscle in my body

were being torn up by the roots; and I had to carry the stiletto

between my teeth. And pitch dark. All my clothes in the way every step.

It was enough to take the starch out of tragedy, and I guess it would

have flattened me out if it hadn’t been just the one thing that could

make me madder still.

“I’ll give you the details of that scene some other time. I’m too

tired now. It is enough to say that she had a pistol and made such an

infernal racket with it--shooting at the roof--that something busted in

my head and I came to. Then we had it out. She agreed to leave because

she knew me too well to believe I had gone to Mowbray’s rooms for any

horrid purpose, and he hadn’t been there anyway. I told her that if she

told you it would have to be before me, and she knew that she couldn’t

brazen it through. So I packed her and got her off this morning. That

means that I had no sleep last night.”

She stood up and Gregory rose also. “Now, there are two things more,”

she said with no lack of decision in her voice, whatever her fatigue of

body. “You must settle Whalen, and you must move to Butte and live in

my house, even if you are only there once or twice a week. Whalen, the

moment he discovers that Ora has gone, will run about Butte defaming

me, or carry the story to the papers. It wouldn’t do me much good to

prove that Mowbray wasn’t there. People like to believe the worst,

and in time would forget that Mowbray had been at the Club on that

particular night. My set might be all right. But the rest--and my

servants--and Ruby and Pearl! They always use the word ‘bad,’ and, as

Ora says, an intrigue is only decent in a foreign language. It gives me

the horrors to think of it. But if we are seen together twice a week,

and you are known to be living in the house, however often you must be

absent, nobody will listen to a story that is not headed toward the

divorce court.”

“I’ll buy Whalen’s claim and tell him to get out of Montana. He’ll go!

As for the rest of your programme--please be sure, Ida, that I stand

ready to protect you now and always. You are not only my wife but an

extraordinary woman, and I am very proud of you.”

“Oh, the extraordinary woman hasn’t been born yet, in spite of the big

fight the sex is putting up,” said Ida lightly, as they left the cabin

and walked down the hill. “When women really are extraordinary they

will be just as happy without men as they now want to be with them.

They try with all their might to be hard, and they can ring outside

like metal, but inside they are just one perpetual shriek for the right

man to come along--that is all but a few hundred thousand tribadists.

But they’ve made a beginning, and one day they’ll really be able to

take men as incidentally as men take women. Then we’ll all be happy.

Don’t you fool yourself that that’s what I’m aiming at, though. I’m the

sort that hangs on to her man like grim death.”

“You’re all right!” said Gregory, who, man-like, was automatically

readjusting himself to the inevitable.

He handed her into the tonneau of the car, and tucked the robe about

her. She gave his hand a hearty friendly shake, for she was much too

wise and too tired for sentiment. “Don’t you worry about Ora,” she

said. “Custer is with her and she has the drawing-room, and is probably

sound asleep at this moment. It must be very restful to get a tragic

love affair off your chest.”

And then the car rolled off and she fell asleep at once.