the next room, babbling of his son and
the west wind and some one he called Bessie.

MacRae's eyes blurred unexpectedly. What a damned shame things had to be
the way they were. Behind this girl, who was in herself lovely and
desirable as a woman should be, loomed the pudgy figure of her father,
ruthless, vindictively unjust. Gower hadn't struck at him openly; but
that, MacRae believed, was merely for lack of suitable opening.

But that did not keep Jack MacRae from thinking--what every normal man
begins to think, or rather to feel, soon or late--that he is incomplete,
insufficient, without some particular woman to love him, upon whom to
bestow love. It was like a revelation. He caught himself wishing that
Betty would wake up and smile at him, bend over him with a kiss. He
stared up at the shadowy roof beams, feeling the hot blood leap to his
face at the thought. There was an uncanny magic in the nearness of her,
a lure in the droop of her tired body. And MacRae struggled against that
seduction. Yet he could not deny that Betty Gower, innocently sleeping
with his hand fast in hers, filled him with visions and desires which
had never before focused with such intensity on any woman who had come
his way. Mysteriously she seemed absolved of all blame for being a
Gower, for any of the things the Gower clan had done to him and his,
even to the misfortune of that night which had cost a man his life.

"It isn't _her_ fault," MacRae said to himself. "But, Lord, I wish she'd
kept away from here, if _this_ sort of thing is going to get me."

What _this_ was he did not attempt to define. He did not admit that he
was hovering on the brink of loving Betty Gower--it seemed an incredible
thing for him to do--but was vividly aware that she had kindled an
incomprehensible fire in him, and he suspected, indeed he feared with a
fear that bordered on spiritual shrinking, that it would go on glowing
after she was gone. And she would go presently. This spontaneous rushing
to his aid was merely what a girl like that, with generous impulses and
quick sympathy, would do for any one in dire need. She would leave
behind her an inescapable longing, an emptiness, a memory of sweetly
disturbing visions. MacRae seemed to see with remarkable clarity and
sureness that he would be penalized for yielding to that bewitching
fancy. By what magic had she so suddenly made herself a shining figure
in a golden dream? Some necromancy of the spirit, invisible bu