che_ woman of empire. And then--the mask
dropped.

The inevitable artificiality of years of unconscious eugenic selection
melted in a breath before the fierce onrush of savage emotion. The girl
sprang to her feet as the hot blood surged to her face and paced
frantically back and forth in a fume of primordial hate. Her small
fists clenched till pink nails bit deep into soft, pink palms. Her
nostrils dilated, quivering; her eyes flashed, and the breath hissed
through her lips in deep sobs of impotent rage against the woman who
had robbed her of this man's love and whose name was upon his lips in
the first moment of his awakening.

She paused and gazed into the face of the man who was the hero of her
fondest dreams--the man who had overcome obstacles, who defied danger
and death, and had won, with his two hands and the great force of his
personality, the respect and devotion of the big men of the rough
country.

And he was hers--never had he been aught else but hers--and she had
lost him! Wildly she resumed her restless pacing, while the words of
the half-breed rang in her ears: "She is beautiful, and she loves him."

She halted abruptly, and in her eye flashed a momentary ray of hope;
the man had said, not "He loves her," but, "She loves him." Could it
be--but, no, there were his own words, spoken at the time of their
first meeting in the gloom of this very room: "I forgot that I have not
the right--that there is another."

And was it not _her_ name that sprang to his lips in the
half-consciousness of a few moments ago? In her mind she pictured the
wild, dark beauty of the other girl, and in the jealous fury of her
heart could have torn her in pieces with her two hands.

"M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky"--the dream of her life had been
realized, but in the realization she had been beaten--all her hopes and
prayers, the long, bitter hours of her soul-anguish, which burned and
gnawed beneath the stoicism and apathy her environment demanded, had
gone for naught, and she, who had borne the brunt of the long battle,
was brushed aside and forgotten.

The spoils belonged to another--and that other, an _Indian_!

CHAPTER XLIV

THE MISSING BONDS

The walls of the room seemed the restraining bars of a prison, shutting
her apart from life and the right to love. She lifted the latch and
flung open the door, standing upon the threshold amid the seething
inrush of the storm.

The fine snow felt good against her thro