d if you'd
broken down he'd have felt awful bad."

"What!"

She grasped me by the coat lapels and shook me. Yes! That weak little
woman shook me, while her face went perfectly livid.

"'He'd have felt badly,' eh? Man! Man! Didn't you _see_! Are you blind?
Why, he asked me to go with him. He asked me to marry him. Think of
it--that great, wonderful man asked me to be his wife--me--Olive
Marceau, the dancer! Oh, oh! Isn't it funny? Why don't you laugh?"

I didn't laugh. I stood there, picking pieces of fur out of my cap and
wondering if ever I should see another woman like this one. She paced
about over the skin rugs, tearing at the throat of her dress as if it
choked her. There were no tears in her eyes, but her whole frame shook
and shuddered as if from great cold, deep set in her bones.

"Why didn't you go?" I asked, stupidly. "You love him, don't you?"

"You know why I didn't go," she cried, fiercely. "I couldn't. How could
I go back and meet his mother? Some day she'd find me out and it would
spoil his life. No, no! If only she hadn't recovered--No, I don't mean
that, either. I'm not his kind, that's all. Ah, God! I let him go--I let
him go, and he never knew!"

She was writhing now on her bed in a perfect frenzy, calling to him
brokenly, stretching out her arms while great, dry, coughing sobs
wrenched her.

"Little one," I said, unsteadily, and my throat ached so that I couldn't
trust myself, "you're a brave--girl, and you're his kind or anybody's
kind."

With that the rain came, and so I left her alone with her comforting
misery. When I told Kink he sputtered like a pinwheel, and every evening
thereafter we two went up to her house and sat with her. We could do
this because she'd quit the theater the day the boat took Prosser away,
and she wouldn't heed Eckert's offers to go back.

"I'm through with it for good," she told us, "though I don't know what
else I'm good for. You see, I don't know anything useful, but I suppose
I can learn."

"Now, if I wasn't married already--" I said.

"Humph!" snorted Kink. "I ain't so young as neither one of my pardners,
miss, but I'm possessed of rare intellectual treasures."

She laughed at both of us.

When a week had passed after the first boat went down with Prosser, we
began to look daily for the first up-river steamer, bringing word direct
from the outside world. It came one midnight, and as we were getting
dressed to go to the landing our tent was torn open