"But, oh, Richard," and again she laughed her little insincere, unstable, society laugh, beginning with brave frankness in one corner of her mouth and ending in a hypocritical wave of forgetfulness before it had time to finish the circle, but fluttering out into a cynical twitching of a thing which might have been a smile or a sneer--

"True love--you know--dear Richard--you must remember the old saying."

She pressed his hand sympathetically. The mouth said nothing, but the hand said plainly: "Do not despair--I am working for a home at The Gaffs."

He pitied her, for there was misery in her eyes and in her laugh and in the very touch of her hand. Misery and insincerity, and that terrible mental state when weakness is roped up between the two and knows, for once in its life, that it has no strength at all.

And she pitied him, for never before on any human face had she seen the terrible irony of agony. Agony she had often seen--but not this irony of it--this agony that saw all its life's happiness blasted and knew it deserved it.

Richard Travis, when he left Westmoreland, knew that he left it forever.

"The Queen is dead--long live the Queen," he said bitterly.

And then there happened what always happens to the thing in the mud--he sank deeper--desperately deeper.

Now--now he would have Helen Conway. He would have her and own her, body and soul. He would take her away--as he had planned, and keep her away. That was easy, too--too far away for the whisper of it ever to come back. If he failed in that he would marry her. She was beautiful--and with a little more age and education she would grace The Gaffs. So he might marry her and set her up, a queen over their heads.

This was his determination when he went to the mill the first of the week. All the week he watched her, talked with her, was pleasant, gallant and agreeable. But he soon saw that Helen was not the same.

There was not the dull wistful resignation in her look, and despair had given way to a cheerfulness he could not understand. There was a brightness in her eyes which made her more beautiful.

The unconscious grip which the shamelessness of it all had over him was evidenced in what he did. He confided his plans to Jud Carpenter, and set him to work to discover the cause.

"See what's wrong," he said significantly. "I am going to take that girl North with me, and away from here. After that it is no affair of yours."

"Anything wrong?" He had reached the point of his moral degradation when right for Helen meant wrong for him.

Jud, with a characteristic shrewdness, put his finger quickly on the spot.

Edward Conway was sober. Clay saw her daily.

"But jes' wait till I see him ag'in--down there. I'll make him drunk enough. Then you'll see a change in the Queen--hey?"

And he laughed knowingly. With a little more bitterness she would go to the end of the world with him.

It was that day he held her hands in the old familiar way, but when he would kiss her at the gate she still fled, crimson, away.

The next morning Clay Westmore walked with her to the mill, and Travis lilted his eyebrows haughtily:

"If anything of that kind happens," he said to himself, "nothing can save me."

He watched her closely--how beautiful she looked that day--how regally beautiful! She had come wearing the blue silk gown, with the lace and beads which had been her mother's. In sheer delight Travis kept slipping to the drawing-in room door to watch her work. Her posture, beautifully Greek, before the machine, so natural that it looked not unlike a harp in her hand; her half-bent head and graceful neck, the flushed face and eyes, the whole picture was like a t.i.tian, rich in color and life.

And she saw him and looked up smiling.

It was not the smile of happiness. He did not know it because, being blind, he could not know. It was the happiness of work--achievement.

He came in smiling. "Why are you so much happier than last week?"

"Would you really like to know?" she said, looking him frankly in the eyes.

He touched her hair playfully. She moved her head and shook it warningly.

"It is because I am at work and father is trying so hard to reform."

"I thought maybe it was because you had found out how much I love you."

It was his old, stereotyped, brazen way, but she did not know it and blushed prettily.

"You are kind, Mr. Travis, but--but that mustn't be thought of.

Please, but I wish you wouldn't talk that way."

"Why, it is true, my queen--of The Gaffs?" he said smiling.

She began to work again.

He came over to her and bent low:

"You know I am to take you Monday night"--

Her hands flew very rapidly--her cheeks mantled into a rich glow. One of the threads snapped. She stopped, confused.

Travis glanced around. No one was near. He bent and kissed her hair:

"My queen," he whispered, "my beautiful queen."

Then he walked quickly out. He went to his office, but he still saw the beautiful picture. It thrilled him and then there swept up over him another picture, and he cried savagely to himself:

"I'll make her sorry. She shall bow to that fine thing yet--my queen."

Nor would it leave him that day, and into the night he dreamed of her, and it was the same t.i.tian picture in a background of red sunset. And her machine was a harp she was playing. He wakened and smiled:

"Am I falling in love with that girl? That will spoil it all."

He watched her closely the next day, for it puzzled him to know why she had changed so rapidly in her manner toward him. He had ridden to Millwood to bring her to the mill, himself; and he had some exquisite roses for her--clipped in the hot-house by his own hands. It was with an unmistakable twitch of jealousy that he learned that Clay Westmore had already come by and gone with her.

"I know what it is now," he said to Jud Carpenter at the mill that morning; "she is half in love with that slow, studious fellow."

Jud laughed: "Say, excuse me, sah--but hanged if you ain't got all the symptoms, y'self, boss?"

Travis flushed:

"Oh, when I start out to do a thing I want to do it--and I'm going to take her with me, or die trying."

Jud laughed again: "Leave it to me--I'll fix the goggle-eyed fellow."

That night when the door bell rang at Westmoreland, Jud Carpenter was ushered into Clay's workshop. He sat down and looked through his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows at the lint and dust and specimens of ore. Then he spat on the floor disgustedly.

"Sorry to disturb you, but be you a surveyor also?"