d see they admired her--but she turned them down easily. She's no
weak-minded chippy, as I know on me own account--the more shame to me."

"Of course she turns others down, for the reason that Ben fills her
heart." She began to weary of her self-imposed task.

He, too, was tired. "We'll see, we'll see," he repeated musingly, and
gazed away towards the cloud-enshrouded peaks in sombre silence--the
lines of his lips as sorrowful as those of an old lion dying in the
desert, arrow-smitten and alone. He had forgotten the hand that pierced
his heart.

Thus dismissed, she rose, her eyes burning like deep opals in the
parchment setting of her skin.

"Life is so cruel!" she said. "I have wished a thousand times that love
had never come to me. Love means only sorrow at the end. Ben has been my
life, my only interest--and now--as he begins to forget--Oh, I can't
bear it! It will kill me!" She sank back into her chair, and, burying
her face, sobbed with such passion that her slight frame shook in the
tempest of it.

Haney turned and looked at her in silence--profoundly stirred to pity by
her sobs, no longer doubting the reality of her despair. When he spoke
his voice was brokenly sweet and very tender.

"'Tis a bitter world, miss, and me heart bleeds for such as you. 'Tis
well ye have a hope of paradise, for, if all you say is true, ye must go
from this world cheated and hungry like meself. Ye have one comfort that
I have not--'tis not your own doing. Ye've not misspent your life as I
have done. What does it all show but that life is a game where each man,
good or bad, takes his chance. The cards fall against you and against me
without care of what we are. I can only say I take me chances as I take
the rain and the sun."

Her paroxysm passed and she rose again, drawing her veil closely over
her face. "Good-bye. We will never meet again."

"Don't say that," he said, struggling painfully to his feet. "Never is a
long time, and good-bye a cruel, sad word to say. Let's call it 'so
long' and better luck."

"You are not angry with me?" she turned to ask.

"Not at all, miss--I thank ye fer opening me eyes to me selfishness."

"Good-bye."

"So long! And may ye have better luck in the new deal, miss."

As she turned at the gate she saw him standing as she had left him, his
brow white and sad and stern, his shoulders drooping as if his strength
and love of life had suddenly been withdrawn.

While still in this mood she sent