d intended
to have him fully in her power. She had not reckoned at its full value
the impatient greed of Elijah; she had not reckoned on the womanhood of
Helen Lonsdale which, though struggling in a fog of sinister influences,
never lost consciousness of its own identity.

When, on the morning of his declaration to Helen, Elijah left the
office, it was as one stricken with a numbing wound. He was not
conscious of its meaning, only of the sickening absence of pain which,
coupled with the knowledge of the wound, filled him with an unknown
terror. As the meaning of it all slowly dawned upon him, the stinging,
biting pain played full upon every tingling nerve. He became filled with
blind, ungovernable, impotent rage. He raged against himself, against
Helen, against Mrs. MacGregor. He would have returned to the office at
once; what darker crime he might have committed, only imagination can
suggest, but return was impossible. When the thought came to him, he was
far beyond Ysleta, surrounded by desert sands that dragged at his feet
till physical exertion was no longer possible. Burning with thirst,
weakened by hunger, he threw himself upon the hot sands and watched with
unconscious eyes the fierce sun sink into the Pacific.

It was here that a wandering vaquero chanced upon him. The simple
Mexican knew naught of the delirium born of a frenzied mind, but he knew
the delirium of blood thirst that lack of water brings upon the desert
wanderer. With this knowledge and belief, he carried Elijah to his hut
and nursed him back to life. If the strange senor chose to call upon the
names of men and women whom he knew not, that was the senor's privilege,
and it was his duty as a host to patter softly with bare feet on the
dirt floor, and to bind the hot forehead with herbs which the desert
gave. It was his duty as a host to bind with thongs the raving senor to
his raw-hide couch, lest he should once more go out into the desert
before his strength had returned.

As consciousness began to return to Elijah, his sense of injury took
another form. He had been for several days in the Mexican's hut and no
one had called for him or inquired. After all he had done for others,
they had left him, turned from him in heartless ingratitude, in this his
hour of need. He raged against Helen especially, but his rage changed
first to an intense longing, then to a determination to see her again.

Toward the evening of the fifth day, he prevailed upon t