im with a queer sort
of patience. "I think--I hope--that you don't know anything about a
man's love, oh, the _way_ men love!" She thought with swift pain of
Jim, of Sylvester; "Oh, the _way_ they love!" And she found that,
under her breath, she was sobbing, "Dickie! Dickie!" as though her
heart had called.

"Will you take back your horse, please?" she said, choking over these
sobs which hurt her more at the moment than he had hurt her. "I'll never
ride on him again. Don't come back here. Don't try to see me any more. I
suppose it--it--the way you love me--is because I was a barmaid, because
you heard people speak of me as 'Hudson's Queen.'" She conquered one of
the sobs. "I thought that after you'd looked into my face so hard that
night and stopped yourself from--from--my lips, that you had understood."
She shook her head from side to side so violently, so childishly, that
the short hair lashed across her eyes. "No one ever will understand!" She
ran away from him and cried under her breath, "Dickie! Dickie!"

She ran straight into the living-room and stopped in the middle of the
floor. Her arms were full of the flowers she had pulled down from "Nigger
Baby's" neck.

"What did you want to bring in all that truck--?" Miss Blake began,
rising from the pianola, then stopped. "What's the matter with you?" she
asked. "Did your young man find you? I sent him up the trail." Her red
eyes sparkled.

"He insulted me!" gasped Sheila. "He dared to insult me!" She was
dramatic with her helpless young rage. "He said I wasn't fit to--to be
the mother of his children. And"--she laughed angrily, handling behind
Cosme's back the weapon that she had been too merciful to use--"and _his_
mother is a murderess, found guilty of murder--and of worse!"

A sort of ripple of sound behind made her turn.

Cosme had followed her, was standing in the open door, and had heard her
speech. The weapon had struck home, and she saw how it had poisoned all
his blood.

He vanished without a word. Sheila turned back to Miss Blake a paler
face. She let fall all her flowers.

"Now he'll never come back," she said.

She climbed up the ladder to her loft.

There she sat for an hour, listening to the silence. Her mind busied
itself with trivial memories. She thought of Amelia Plecks.... It would
have comforted her to hear that knock and the rattle of her dinner tray.
The little sitting-room at Hudson's Hotel, with its bit of tapestry and
its yellow tea