voice unsteady, scarcely conscious of the fact that he was putting what transpired in his mind into words. "Especially ... to a thing like that!"

The gesture of his one arm which indicated the prostrate figure was eloquent of the contempt he felt and the posture of his body, bent forward from his hips, was indication of his sincerity. He was so intense emotionally that he could not realize that his last words might lash the suffering woman cruelly. The thought was in him, so strong, so revolting, that it had to come out. He could not have restrained it had he consciously appreciated the hurt that its expression would give the woman.

She stared up at him, her numb brain wondering clumsily at the storm indicated in his eyes, about his mouth, and they held so a moment before she sat back in her chair, weakly, one wrist against her forehead.

"Here, come over by the window ... never mind him," he said, almost roughly, stepping to her side, grasping her arm and shaking it.

Ten minutes before the careful watching of that unconscious man had been the one important thing of the night, but now it was an inconsequential affair, a bother. Ten minutes before his interest in the woman had been a light, transient fancy; now he was more deeply concerned with her trouble than he ever had been with an affair of his own. He lifted the bandaged arm and placed a pillow beneath it, almost carelessly; then closed the door. He turned about and looked at Ann Lytton, who had gone to stand by the window, her back to him, face in her hands.

He walked across and halted, towering over her, looking helplessly down at the back of her bowed head. His arms were limp at his sides, until she swayed as though she would fall, and, then, he reached out to support her, grasping her shoulders gently with his big palms; when she steadied, he left his hands so, lifting the right one awkwardly to stroke her shivering shoulder. They stood silent many minutes, the man suffering with the woman, suffering largely because of his inability to bear a portion of her grief. After a time, he forced her about with his hands and, when she had turned halfway around, she lifted her face to look into his. She blinked and strained her eyes open and laughed mirthlessly, then was silent, with the knuckles of her fist pressed tightly against her mouth.

"I am so glad ... so glad that it was you ..." she said, huskily, after a wait in which she mastered herself, the thought that was uppermost in her mind finding the first expression. "I heard you say, down there, that he was a cripple and that ... that's what he is ... what I thought. You ... you understand, don't you? A woman in my place has to think something like that!"—in unconscious confession to a weakness. "I heard you say he was a cripple ... the man you were carrying ... and I thought it must be Ned, because I've had to think that, too. You understand? Don't you?"

She looked into his eyes with the directness of a pleading child and, gripping her shoulders, he nodded.

"I think I understand, ma'am. I ... and I hope you can forget all th' mean things I've said about him to-night. I—"

"And when you called me in here," she interrupted, heedless of his attempt at apology, "I was afraid at first, because something told me it was he. I had come all the way from Maine to see him; to find out about him, and I didn't want to blind myself after that. I wanted to know ... the worst."

"You have, ma'am," he said, grimly, and took his hands from her shoulders and turned away.

"I was afraid it was Ned from the very first, but out there, with those other men around, I ... couldn't make myself look at him. And after that the suspense was horrible. I was glad when you called me to help you because that made me face it ... and even knowing what I know now is better in some ways than uncertainty. I ... I might have dodged, anyhow, if you hadn't made me feel you were trying to find out how far I would go ... what I would do. Your doubting me made me doubt myself and that ... that drove me on.

"It took a lot of courage to look at his ... face. But I had to know. I had to; I'd come all this way to know."

She hesitated, staring absently, and Bayard waited in silence for her to go on.

"It seemed quite natural to hear those men talking about him the way they did, swearing at him and laughing.... And then to hear someone protecting him because he is weak,"—with a brave effort at a smile. "That's what people in the East, his own people, even, have done; and I ... I had to stand up for him when everything, even he, was against me....

"I'd hoped that out here, at the mine, he'd be different, that he'd behave, that people would come to respect and like him. I'd hoped for that right up to the time I saw you coming across the street with him. I felt it must be he. I hadn't heard from him in months, not a line. That's why I came out here. And I guess that in my heart I'd expected to find him like that. The uncertainty, that was the worst....

"Peculiar, isn't it, why I should have been uncertain? I should have admitted what I felt intuitively, but I always have hoped, I always will hope that he'll come through it sometime. That hope has kept me from telling myself that it must be the same with him out here as it was back there; that's why I fooled myself until I saw you ... with him.

"And I'm so glad it happened to be you who picked him up. You understand, you—"

Emotion choked off her words.

Bayard walked from her, returned to the bedside and stared down at the inert figure there. He was in a tumult. The contrast between this man and wife was too dreadful to be comprehended in calm. Lytton was the lowest human being he had ever known, degenerated to an organism that lived solely to satiate its most unworthy appetites. Ann, the woman crying yonder, was quite the most beautiful creature on whom he had ever looked and, though he had seen her for the first time no more than an hour before, her charm had touched every masculine instinct, had gripped him with that urge which draws the sexes one to another ... yet, he was not conscious of it. She was, in his eyes, so wonderful, so removed from his world, that he could not presume to recognize her attraction as for himself. She was a distant, unattainable creature, one to serve, to admire; perhaps, sometime, to worship reverently and that was the fact which set the blood congesting in his head when he looked down at the waster for whom she had traveled across a continent that she might suffer like this. Lytton was attainable, was comprehensible, and Bayard was urged to make him suffer in atonement for the wretchedness he had brought to this woman who loved him.... Who.... loved him?

The man turned to look at Ann again, his lower lip caught speculatively between his thumb and forefinger.

"Now, I suppose the thing to do is to plan, to make some sort of arrangements ... now that I have found him," she said in a strained voice, bracing her shoulders, lifting a hand to brush a lock of hair back from her white, blue-veined temple.

She smiled courageously at the cowboy who approached her diffidently.

"I came out here to find out what was going on, to help him if he were succeeding, to ... help him if ... as I have found him."

Her directness had returned and, as she spoke, she looked Bayard in the eye, steadily.

"Well, whatever I can do, ma'am, I'm anxious to do," he said, repressing himself that he might not give ground to the suspicion that he was forcing himself on her, though his first impulse was to take her affairs in hand and shield her from the trying circumstances which were bound to follow. "I can't do much to help you, but all I can do—"

"I don't think I could do anything without you," she said, simply, letting her gaze travel over his big frame. "It's so far away, out here, from anyone I know or the things I am accustomed to. It's ... it's too wonderful, finding someone out here who understands Ned, when even his own people back