She hid her face again. He felt his face grow hot. He sat perfectly still, listening. At last she said:

"When I came here to-night and saw it all--empty--I thought: 'This means I am deserted by all--he has brought me here to see it--to know it. What can I do but go with him? It is all that is left. Did I make myself? Did I give myself this fatal beauty--for you say I am beautiful. And did I make you with your strength--your conquering strength, and--Oh, could I overcome my environment?' But now--now--it is different--and if I am lost, Richard Travis--it will be your fault--yours and G.o.d's."

He stroked her hair. He was pale and that strange light which Jud Carpenter had seen in his eyes that afternoon blazed now with a nervous flash.

"That is my story," she cried. "It is now too late even for G.o.d to come and tell me through you--now since we--you and I--oh, how can I say it--you have taken me this way--you, so strong and brave and--grand--"

He flushed hot with shame. He put his hand gently over her mouth.

"Hush--hush--child--my G.o.d--you hurt me--shame me--you know not what you say."

"I can understand all--but one thing," she went on after a while.

"Why have you brought me to this--here--at night alone with you--to tell me this--to make me--me--oh, change in my feelings--to you? Oh, must I say it?" she cried--"tell you the truth--that--that--now since I see you as you are--I--I,--I am willing to go!"

"Hush, Helen, my child, my G.o.d--don't crush me--don't--listen, child--listen! I am a villain--a doubly-dyed, infamous one--when you hear"--

She shook her head and put one of her pretty hands over his mouth.

"Let me tell you all, first. Let me finish. After all this, why have you brought me here to tell me this, when all you had to do was to keep silent a few more hours--take me on to the station, as you said--and--and--"

"I will tell you," he said gently. "Yes, you have asked the question needed to be explained. Now hear from my own lips my infamy--not all of it, G.o.d knows--that would take the night; but this peculiar part of it. Do you know why I love to stroke your hair, why I love to touch it, to touch you, to look into your eyes; why I should love, next to one thing of all earth, to take you in my arms and smother you--kill you with kisses--your hair, your eyes, your mouth?"

She hid her face, crimson.

"Did no one tell you, ever tell you--how much you look like your cousin"--he stopped--he could not say the word, but she guessed.

White with shame, she sprang up from him, startled, hurt. Her heart tightened into a painful thing which p.r.i.c.ked her.

"Then--then--it is not I--but my Cousin Alice--oh--I--yes--I did hear--I should have known"--it came from her slowly and with a quivering tremor.

He seized her hands and drew her back down by him on the sofa.

"When I started into this with you I was dead--dead. My soul was withered within me. All women were my playthings--all but one. She was my Queen--my wife that was to be. I was dead, my G.o.d--how dead I was! I now see with a clearness that is killing me; a clearness as of one waking from sleep and feeling, in the first wave of conscience, that inconceivable tenderness which hurts so--hurts because it is tender and before the old hard consciousness of material things come again to toughen. How dead I was, you may know when I say that all this web now around you--from your entrance into the mill till now--here to-night--in my power--body and soul--that it was all to gratify this dead sea fruit of my soul, this thing in me I cannot understand, making me conquer women all my life for--oh, as a lion would, to kill, though not hungry, and then lie by them, dying, and watch them,--dead! Then this same G.o.d--if any there be--He who you say put more on you than you could bear--He struck me, as, well--no--He did not strike--but ground me, ground me into dust--took her out of my life and then laid my soul before me so naked that the very sunlight scorches it. What was it the old preacher said--that 'touch of G.o.d' business? 'Touch--'" he laughed, "not touch, but blow, I say--a blow that ground me into star-dust and flung me into s.p.a.ce, my heart a burning comet and my soul the tail of it, dissolving before my very eyes. What then can I, a lion, dying, care for the doe that crosses my path? The beautiful doe, beautiful even as you are.

Do you understand me, child?"

She scarcely knew what she did. She remembered only the terrible empty room. The owl uncannily turning its head here and there and staring at her with its eyes, yellow in the firelight.

She dropped on the floor by him and clung again to his knees, her head in his lap in pity for him.

"That is the story of the dying lion," he said after a while. "The lion who worked all his cunning and skill and courage to get the beautiful doe in his power, only to find he was dying--dying and could not eat. Could you love a dying lion, child?" he asked abruptly--"tell me truly, for as you speak so will I act--would make you queen of all the desert."

She raised her eyes to his. They were wet with tears. He had touched the pity in them. She saw him as she had never seen him before. All her fear of him vanished, and she was held by the cords of a strange fascination. She knew not what she did. The owl looked at her queerly, and she almost sobbed it out, hysterically:

"Oh, I could--love--you--you--who are so strong and who suffer--suffer so"--

"You could love me?" he asked. "Then, then I would marry you to-night--now--if--if--that uncovering--that touch--had not been put upon me to do n.o.bler things than to gratify my own pa.s.sion, had not shown me the other half which all these years has been dead--my double." He was silent.

"And so I sent to-day," he began after a while, "for a friend of yours, one with whom you can be happier than--the dying lion. He has been out of the county--sent out--it was part of the plan, part of the snare of the lion and his whelp. And so I sent for him this morning, feeling the death blow, you know. I sent him an urgent message, to meet you here at nine." He glanced at his watch. "It is past that now, but he had far to ride. He will come, I hope--ah, listen!"

They heard the steps of a rider coming up the gravel walk.

"It is he," said Travis calmly--"Clay."

She sprang up quickly, half defiantly. The old Conway spirit flashed in her eyes and she came to him tall and splendid and with half a look of protest, half command, and yet in it begging, pleading, yearning for--she knew not what.

"Why--why--did you? Oh, you do not know! You do not understand--love--love--can it be won this way--apprenticed, bargained--given away?"

"You must go with him, he loves you. He will make you happy. I am dying--is not part of me already dead?"

For answer she came to him, closer, and stood by him as one who in war stands by a comrade shot through and ready to fall.

He put his arms around her and drew her to him closer, and she did not resist--but as a child would, hers also she wound around his neck and whispered:

"My lion! Oh, kill me--kill me--let me die with you!"

"Child--my precious one--my--oh, G.o.d, and you--forgive me this. But let me kiss you once and dream--dream it is she"--

She felt his kisses on her hair, her eyes.

"Good-bye--Alice--Alice--good-bye--forever--"

He released her, but she clung to him sobbing. Her head lay on his breast, and she shook in the agony of it all.

"You will forgive me, some day--when you know--how I loved her," he gasped, white and with a bitter light in his face.

She looked up: "I would die," she said simply, "for a love like that."

They heard the steps of a man approaching the house. She sat down on the old sofa pale, trembling and with bitterness in her heart.

Travis walked to the door and opened it:

"Come in, Clay," he said quietly. "I am glad that my man found you.

We have been waiting for you."

"I finished that survey and came as fast as I could. Your man rode on to The Gaffs, but I came here as you wrote me to do," and Clay came in quietly, speaking as he walked to the fire.

CHAPTER XIX

FACE TO FACE WITH DEATH

He came in as naturally as if the house were still inhabited, though he saw the emptiness of it all, and guessed the cause. But when he saw Helen, a flushed surprise beamed through his eyes and he gave her his hand.

"Helen!--why, this is unexpected--quite unusual, I must say."

She did not speak, as she gave him her hand, but smiled sadly. It meant: "Mr. Travis will tell you all. I know nothing. It is all his planning."