ong of sister and sport of brother, where a
sweet-faced, gentle-voiced mother--

"Ah... Mother!" And at that word the dark tide of men seemed to rise and
swell at her, to trample her sacred memory as inevitably and brutally as
it had used her body.

Only the piercing pang of that memory remained with Beauty Stanton. She
was a part of Benton. She was treading the loose board-walk of the great
and vile construction camp. She might draw back from leer and touch, but
none the less was she there, a piece of this dark, bold, obscure life.
She was a cog in the wheel, a grain of dust in the whirlwind, a morsel
of flesh and blood for the hungry maw of a wild and passing monster of
progress.

Her hurried steps carried her on with her errand. Neale! She knew
where to find him. Often she had watched him play, always regretfully,
conscious that he did not fit there. His indifference had baffled her as
it had piqued her professional vanity. Men had never been indifferent to
her; she had seen them fight for her mocking smiles. But Neale! He had
been stone to her charm, yet kind, gracious, deferential. Always she
had felt strangely shamed when he stood bareheaded before her. Beauty
Stanton had foregone respect. Yet respect was what she yearned for. The
instincts of her girlhood, surviving, made a whited sepulcher of her
present life. She could not bear Neale's indifference and she had failed
to change it. Her infatuation, born of that hot-bed of Benton life,
had beaten and burned itself to destruction against a higher and better
love--the only love of her womanhood. She would have slaved for him. But
he had passed her by, absorbed with his own secret, working toward some
fateful destiny, lost, perhaps, like all the others there.

And now she learned that the mystery of him--his secret--was the same
old agony of love that sent so many on endless, restless roads--Allie
Lee! and he believed her dead!

After all the bitterness, life had moments of sweetest joy. Fate was
being a little kind to her--Beauty Stanton. It would be from her lips
Neale would hear that Allie Lee was alive--Beauty Stanton's soul seemed
to soar with the realization of how that news would uplift Neale, craze
him with happiness, change his life, save him. He was going to hear
the blessed tidings from a woman whom he had scorned. Always afterward,
then, he would think of Beauty Stanton with a grateful heart. She was to
be the instrument of his salvation. Hough and