Chapter XIV: Part II: I (5)

“No, but it’s a streak--a shoot--of chalcopyrite ten feet wide and of the highest value. And it may go down eight or nine hundred feet before it loses its richness and degenerates into a lower grade of ore. But there may be millions of tons of that. This is one of the few great shoots of chalcopyrite known.”

“Gregory!” said Ida ecstatically, “do you remember I always had such faith in you that I urged you so often to prospect on the ranch that you got quite cross?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Never say I doubted you. I may be enchanted at all this success and recognition of your abilities, but I have never had the least sensation of surprise.”

Gregory smiled down into the eager beautiful face so close to his shoulder. She had manipulated him down the ladder into the tunnel and for the moment they were alone. “I hope you are half as proud of me as I am of you,” he said gallantly, although he was a trifle uneasy; not because she looked as if she might kiss him there in the semi-dark, but because he felt an impulse to kiss her. For the moment he regretted the wild romance upon which he was embarked, the torments of its present, the tragic possibilities of its future. Ida now would make an ideal wife, demanding far less of his jealously guarded inner self, to say nothing of his time, than Ora, who had that most terrible of all gifts, a passionate soul. But this disloyalty was brief, and he frowned and disengaged his hand, although he was far from suspecting that Ida had yielded to the temptation to pay him deliberate court.

“I shall be able to give you a string of pearls before long,” he said lightly, “or a million or two to play with. I want to hear what these men have to say. Suppose you go back with Lord John, and tell them that we are coming up soon for lunch. Ring the bell in the station twice for the skip and three times for hoist.”

Ida shrank back against the wall as if she had been struck, but when Lord John, who had made several futile attempts to separate her from her husband, came eagerly forward, she left Gregory to the chorus of enthusiasm and congratulation, and obeyed his directions.

XIX

Ida was in such high spirits during the luncheon that she managed to be brilliant and amusing within the limits of her expurgated vocabulary. Only Ora, who knew her so well, saw the sombre fire in the depths of her eyes, the sudden twist of her mouth at the corners, noted that her cheeks were crimson instead of their usual delicate coral, the occasional clenching of her hands. But she had little time to speculate upon the cause, for the large party were her guests, and, like any other Rocky Mountain hostess in the liquid month of June, she feared the sudden drenching of her tables.

But the day remained fine, and the geologists, who ever since their arrival in Butte had evinced a remarkable indifference to geology as a topic for conversation, were as lively as the newspaper men, and deeply appreciative of the good looks and animated conversation of the four women who ate almost nothing in their efforts at mental subdivision. Ora had invited also her engineer and Professor Whalen, placing the latter as far from Ida as possible; but she saw that he was covertly watching the woman he must hate. Ida had thrown him a careless nod when they met by the tables in the grove; and he had returned it with a bow of surpassing dignity.

Gregory, now that the men of science and of the press had served his purpose, was eager to be rid of them, and excused himself when the luncheon was half over, on the plea that he was his own manager and needed at the mine. He disappeared into the Primo shaft house, as he often took that short cut to his own shaft, and Mowbray, who had been silent, for Gregory affected his buoyant spirits unaccountably, moved his chair up beside Ida and endeavoured to divert her mind from the general to the specific. But she snubbed him and he relapsed into gloom. On the train, however, when she saw that Whalen, who was on his way to Helena to apply for his patent, was watching her, she flirted pointedly with the handsome Englishman.

The guests were to leave Butte on the seven o’clock train, which, fortunately for the strain that all were beginning to feel, was only half an hour late. When it had pulled out and Ida had waved her last farewell, she walked in silence to her car, and intimated with a curt nod that Mowbray might take the seat beside her. “But tell Ben where you want to go,” she said, “for I can’t ask you to dine with me tonight.”

Mowbray told the chauffeur to drop him at the Club and then asked his lady, whose animation had dropped to zero, if anything had happened to annoy her, or if she were merely worn out.

“Don’t ask me any questions,” said Ida sharply. “I’m sorry to seem inhospitable but I’ve got something to think out. You can go to the dance at the Country Club.”

“I shall more likely go to my rooms and write letters. Don’t worry about me. Shall we have a ride tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t know.”

Mowbray was always philosophical about women, having been brought up with many sisters. “You are tired out,” he said without too much sympathy. “Just call me up if you feel like doing anything in the morning.”

“All right. Good night.”

She left him at the Silver Bow Club. Her own house was only a few blocks distant. She told the maid who admitted her that she wanted no dinner and should go to bed at once and without assistance. When she reached the seclusion of her bedroom she locked the door, flung her hat on the floor and stamped on it, broke several valuable objects, and then paced up and down, gritting her teeth to keep from screaming.

There was but one person on earth that she hated more than she hated Gregory Compton and that was herself. She had meant to play a waiting game of many interviews, in which her fine calculation had mapped out the insidious approach, the adroit pushing aside of barrier after barrier, until Gregory returned almost inadvertently to his allegiance. She had no desire for romantic scenes; they would have embarrassed herself, and with her instinctive knowledge of man, she knew that Gregory would shrink back from any situation that might involve explanations. Nor did she wish to let a man so absorbed as Gregory feel that he was loved too much, lest he chafe at the thought of feminine exactions, and his mind continue to dwell upon the delights of freedom. He might be capable of moments when the woman alone existed, but there would be long intervals when he would hate a woman’s clinging arms if they made him ten minutes late for his work, particularly if he was headed for his beloved mine. Ida, shrewd, self-controlled, watchful, knew herself, now that her powers were developed, to be the natural mate for such a man. He would drive a temperamental woman mad.

And she had seemed to make a steady progress. The geologists had remained for three days in Butte before visiting Perch of the Devil. On the second evening they had been entertained by the professors of the School of Mines, but on the other two evenings she had given them elaborate dinners, and Gregory had attended each. She had seen that he was increasingly proud of her, and grateful. Upon both occasions they not only had had a little talk apart but he had drifted back to her more than once.

And today she had spoiled everything! In the darkness of that mine she had weakened and made open love to him. She had practically offered herself--she ground her teeth as she thought of her clinging fingers, her appealing eyes, her cheek almost brushing his--and he had rejected her--with consideration, but finality!

If he had knocked her down she would have cherished hope. But in this hour she had none. His indifference was colossal. The busiest men in America had their women; she no longer could comfort herself with the delusion that the mine was a controlling and exclusive passion; she merely had ceased completely to attract him--and she remembered how thorough he was; she no more could relight those old fires than she could blow life into the dead ashes of Big Butte. He would turn to another woman one of these days; it was not within human possibility that he would go through life without love; but not to her! not to her! She would do to entertain his friends, to flaunt his wealth and advertise his success; in time no doubt he would treat her as a confidential friend; but sexually she was an old story. It was apparent that the mere thought bored him; it was only when Gregory was bored that he was really polite.

If she could but have accepted this, resigned all hope, instead of subjecting herself to humiliation; she, who had never failed to send the blood to a man’s head with a glance! She didn’t want to hate him. She didn’t want to hate herself. Why could she not have been content to accept the inevitable with philosophy and grace?

The answer that, owing to some mysterious law of her being, she loved him, made her want to smash everything else in the room; but she would have some difficulty concealing the present wreckage from her servants, so she bit her handkerchief to shreds instead.

When the furies had tired her body she fell into a chair and although her brain was still hot with the blood sent there by excitement and lack of food, she admitted frankly that the peculiar nature of her agitation was due to wounded pride and intense mortification; had she arrived at a point where she no longer could hope, but without self-betrayal, she might have wept bitter tears, but there still would have been a secret sweetness in loving him. Now, she growled out her hatred. She longed to do something to hurt him. If she only were another sort of woman! She would go to Mowbray’s rooms, go to Helena with him for a week. And simultaneously she yearned to be consoled, not only in her heart but in her wounded pride.

Should she ask her husband for a divorce; revenge herself by becoming an English duchess? Ora, in the moment or two they had found together at the station, had told her that Mowbray’s older brother was at Davos, unmistakably dying of tuberculosis, and that his engagement, insisted upon by his father, had been broken. Valdobia had given her this news in his last letter, adding the hope that his friend would bring Ida back with him that they might all be together once more.

Was this the solution of her problem? A marriage that would demonstrate to Gregory Compton that her moment of seeming weakness was mere coquetry; a marriage that would raise her an immeasurable social distance above him; a permanent dissociation from everything that could remind her of him and this terrible obsession that had disorganised her being, reduced her to the grovelling level of the women whose dependence on the favour of man she had always despised?

When she reflected that her revenge would fall flat, Gregory’s not being the order of mind to appreciate the social pre-eminence of a titled race, she ground her teeth, again. There was nothing left but to consider herself. Should she choose the part that not only would exalt her station and fill her life with the multifarious interests of a British peeress, but banish this man in time from her memory; or stay on and alternate torments with moments of indescribable sweetness when he smiled upon her? And might she not yet manipulate him into her net if she continued to play the waiting game? Or would she go wholly to pieces the first time they were alone together?

Her pride strangled at this possibility and brought her to her feet. The blood was still boiling in her head, she knew what nerves were for the first time in her life. She made up her mind to go out and walk. In this part of the town she was not likely to meet anyone.

She found another hat, put on a warm coat, and let herself out of the house. It was ten o’clock. All the West Side, no doubt, was at the Country Club.

For a time she walked rapidly and aimlessly, trying to focus her mind on other things. But when a woman is in love and the path is stony, she is obsessed much as people are that suffer from shock and reiterate ceaselessly the circumstances of its cause. Her brain seethed with hate, longed for revenge. Nothing would have gratified her more than to take the secret revenge of infidelity. Many a woman has taken a lover for the satisfaction of laughing to herself at her husband’s dishonour; to dishonour being the most satisfactory of all vengeance, whether open or concealed.

She realised abruptly that her thoughts had led her unconsciously to the door of John Mowbray’s lodgings. The flat had been lent him by a banker to whom he had brought a letter from his brother, and who had gone East immediately after his arrival; the banker’s wife lived in Southern California. It occupied the second story of a house in West Broadway and had its own entrance on a side street. Mowbray had given a tea there a day or two before, and Ida had presided.

She did not delude herself for a moment that she could take her full revenge upon the unconscious Gregory, but at least she could do something quite shocking, something that would infuriate a husband. Ida was not afraid of any man, least of all one that wished to make a duchess of her, but it would be an additional satisfaction to torment him, and an adventure with a spice of danger in it no doubt would restore her equilibrium. If Mowbray made violent love to her she felt, by some obscure process of feminine logic, that she would forgive Gregory Compton.

She glanced hastily up and down the street, then more sharply, wondering if she had dreamed that once or twice she had looked over her shoulder with the sense of being followed. It was a bright moonlight night. No one was in sight. She rang the bell of Mowbray’s flat. The door was opened from above. At the head of the stairs stood the Jap who served as housekeeper and valet.

She hesitated a moment, taken aback. She had forgotten the servant. Then she closed the door behind her. “Is Lord John in?” she asked negligently.

The Jap spread out his hands deprecatingly. “His lordship not at home,” he announced.

Ida hesitated another moment, then ascended the stair and entered the living-room. “Turn on the lights,” she said, “I shall wait for him.”

The Jap obeyed orders, bowed, and withdrew. For a moment Ida was tempted to telephone to the Silver Bow Club, but Mowbray was sure to return soon to write his letters, and she liked the idea of giving him a surprise. She lit a cigarette, selected a novel from the bookcase, and sank into the most comfortable of the chairs. The room was warm; both body and brain were very weary. The cool night air had driven the blood from her head. She yawned, dropped the book, fell sound asleep.

She awoke as the clock was striking half-past one. She was still alone. For a moment she stared about her, bewildered, then rose and laughed aloud.

“This is about the flattest----” She went swiftly out into the hall and awoke the slumbering Jap. “You little yellow devil,” she cried, “why didn’t you tell me that his lordship had gone to the party at the Country Club?”

Once more the Jap was deprecating. “Madam did not ask.”

Ida produced a gold piece. “Well, you are not to tell him that I came, nor anyone else. If you do I’ll wring your neck.”

The Jap’s eyes, fixed upon the gold, glistened. “Why should I tell?” he asked philosophically; and having pocketed the coin ran downstairs and bowed the lady out.

When Ida was about to turn the corner she whirled about, this time with a definite sensation of being followed. But the street was empty save for a man slouching down the hill with an unsteady gait, his head nodding toward his chest. It was a familiar sight in any mining town; nevertheless she quickened her steps, and in a moment was safe within her own house.

XX

On the morning following the departure of the geologists Gregory took the bit between his teeth and went in to Butte to see his wife. In his first moment of shock and confusion it had seemed to him best that Ora, whose subtlety he recognised, was the one to manipulate Ida’s still too formalistic mind toward the divorce court; but he was unaccustomed to relegate any part of his affairs to others, least of all to a woman. Nor did he think it necessary to inform Ora of his sudden decision. He might work almost double shift to keep her out of his thoughts and diminish temptation, and he might marry her and continue to love her passionately; but she would obtain little ascendency over him. He knew what he wanted; he had trained his will until at times it appeared formidable even to himself, and he was as nearly the complete male that regards woman, however wonderful, as the supplementary female as still survives.

He had few illusions about himself, and it had crossed his mind more than once, since the hope of divorce had dazzled both of them, that for a year or two or least there must be a certain amount of friction between a nature like his and a complex, super-civilised, overgrown feminine ego like Ora Blake. While he had sat with his legs stretched out to the fire and his eyes half closed, his body weary, but mentally alert, he had received certain definite impressions of an independent almost anarchical mind, contemptuous of the world and its midges save as they might be of use to herself; of a mind too well-bred ever to be managing and exacting in any vulgar sense, but inexorable in its desires and as unscrupulous in their pursuit as her father had been; of a superlative refinement coupled with a power of intense and reckless passion found only in women possessing that quality of imagination that exalts and idealises the common mortal attributes. Moreover, it was a mind that, the first joy of submission and surrender diminished, would think for itself.

Until that night when both had dropped the mask for a moment he had never thought of her as a complicated ego, merely as one from whom he felt temporarily separated after a union of centuries; and it had been the reluctant admission that he knew her very little, save as a gracious woman and his own companion, that had enabled him to school himself to spend long hours with her alone as before. He had tumbled blindly into matrimony once, and no matter how much he might love this woman, to whom he had seemed from the first to be united by a secret and ancient bond, he was determined none the less to marry the second time with his eyes wide open.

But although his glimpses of Ora’s winding depths gave him moments of uneasiness he always fell back upon the complacent reflection that he was a man, a man, moreover, with a cast-iron will, and that the woman did not live who would not have to adapt herself to him did he take her to wife.

Until the day before the party at the mines he had been content to drift, but a certain moment down in his own mine had given a new and abrupt turn to both thoughts and purpose. Ida might have spared herself her agonies of shame: she had not betrayed her love, but she had given him a distinct impression that she was employing her redoubtable feminine weapons to reduce him to his old allegiance. He had remembered for a poignant moment that he once had loved this woman to distraction, and during that moment he saw her again as the most beautiful and distracting of her sex. His brief surrender had filled him with fury. He had no intention of despising himself. From boyhood up he had had nothing but contempt for the man that did not know his own mind. If it had not been for this serene confidence in himself, he, who was constitutionally wary in spite of the secret and wistful springs of romance in his nature and the apparent suddenness of his bold plunges, never would have married Ida Hook, nor any woman, until he had sounded her thoroughly. But he had behaved like any hot-headed and conceited young fool, and, much as he now admired Ida, it both infuriated him and appalled him to feel even for a moment toward her as he had in his raw inexperienced youth.

He therefore made up his mind to go to her like a rational being and ask her to give him his freedom. They had made a mistake. They were reasonable members of an advanced civilisation, where mistakes were recognised and rectified whenever possible. He did not doubt for a moment that reason and logic must appeal as forcibly to a woman as to himself.

The door of his wife’s house was opened after the usual delay, and the maid told him that Mrs. Compton was upstairs in the billiard room “or somewheres.” He took the stairs three steps at a time lest his courage evaporate; but drew a long breath of relief when he entered the large square hall and saw nothing of Ida. He would have rung for the maid, but reflected that no doubt he had already provided enough gossip for the republic below stairs without admitting that he did not know his way round his wife’s house. He was about to knock on each door in turn when he noticed that one in a corner at the end of the hall was open and that it led into a narrow passageway. Beyond there was light, possibly in one of those boudoirs of which he had heard. Mrs. Murphy would have been sure to have a boudoir, and no doubt Ida, little disposed as she was to indolence, spent some part of her mornings in it.

He adventured down the passageway that terminated in a large room full of sunlight. He saw his wife standing in the middle of this room looking about her with a curious expression of wistfulness. The little hall was carpeted, but she heard him almost as soon as he saw her; she would have known those light swift footsteps in a marching army. He was inside the room before she could reach the doorway and close it behind her and astonished to see a deep blush suffuse her face. His quick darting glance took in his surroundings as he shook hands with her. The room was a nursery.

“I had two beds put in here and have just seen that they were taken out,” stammered Ida.

Her embarrassment was communicable, but he said gruffly as he walked to the window, “Didn’t know the Murphys had children.”

“Oh, yes, they had two little ones. Seven in all. I think it odd they should have left the toys here even if they are rich enough to buy toys every day. There is something sacred about a child’s toys.”

Ida was merely talking against time, but she hardly could have said anything better calculated to arrest his attention.

He turned and looked at her in astonishment.

“Do you mean to intimate--that you wish you had children? You?”

Ida’s brain as well as her body was very weary, but it sprang to action at once. “Oh, yes,” she said intensely. “Oh, yes! And I might have had two! They would be wonderful in this house.”

“But----” He cast about desperately. “With two children you could not have gone to Europe.”

“That wouldn’t have mattered.”

“But--don’t you realise that it is this last year of unusual advantages that has developed you so--so--remarkably? You hated children----”

“And do you suppose it was Europe that made me want children?”

“Oh, of course, nothing is as simple as that. You were taken out of yourself, out of your narrow self-sufficient little life; all your fine latent powers were developed----”

“But not altogether by Europe! Still, I don’t deny that it woke me up, gave me not one new point of view but many, developed me, if you like that better. Would you like lunch earlier? You get up at such unearthly hours----”

“I’m not hungry. I want to talk to you. That is what I came for. Won’t you sit down--no, not here! Let us go where there are comfortable chairs. I--I am tired.”

“Very well. Let us go down to the library.” As she walked before him he noted that her superb body, which usually looked as if set with fine steel springs, was heavy and listless.

The masculine looking room below restored his balance.

“You don’t look as well as usual,” he remarked, as he threw himself into the deepest of the chairs. “Yesterday was a hard day, and you had had those men on your hands for----”

“I am tired,” said Ida briefly, “but it doesn’t matter. What do you want to talk to me about?”

He did not answer for a few moments, then he stood up and thrust his hands into his pockets and scowled at the carpet. Involuntarily Ida also rose to her feet and braced herself, crossing her arms over her breast.

“It is impossible for this to go on,” said Gregory rapidly. “It is unnatural. People don’t submit to broken lives in these days. I think you had better get a divorce and be happy. Mowbray seems to be a fine fellow. Of course no one doubts that he has followed you here. He could make you happy, and as soon as I am able--in a year or two--I shall give you a million; in time more.”

“Oh! Oh!”

“You surely cannot want to live for ever like--like--this!”

“I have no desire to marry again. Have you?” She shot the question at him, every nerve on edge with suspicion.

But the last thing in his mind was to betray Ora, and he answered promptly. “No. But I am absorbed in my mine, and my life will be more crowded every year with accumulating interests. You are a woman. You are young--and--and--you wish for children.”

Ida believed that after her revelation of yesterday he had come to let her down gently. She determined to throw her all on one heavy stake. If she lost, at least she would have had the satisfaction of telling him that she loved him; she had already sacrificed her pride, and there was a reckless sweetness in the thought of revealing herself absolutely to this man. When a woman loves a man not quite hopelessly she experiences almost as much satisfaction in listening to her own confession as to his.

She drew herself up, her arms still across her breast, and Gregory thought he had never seen a woman look so dignified and so noble.

“Listen, Gregory,” she said, with no tremor in her voice but deepening sadness in her eyes, “I regret that I have no children because they would be yours. I am willing to live and die alone because I have lost your love. I know how I lost it, but, as I look back over my crudity and ignorance, I do not see how I could have kept it. You were immeasurably above and beyond me. Nature, or some mental inheritance, gave you sensitiveness, refinement, distinction, to say nothing of brains. I had to achieve all that I am now. I was a raw conceited fool like thousands of American girls of any class, who think they are just a little too good for this world. I had ceased to love you in my inordinate love of myself, and the natural consequence was, that as I made no attempt to improve myself, I lost you as soon as my halo of novelty had disappeared. I took for granted, however, that I was returning from Europe to the old conditions. When I discovered that you had no such intention I was piqued, astonished, angry. But when I thought it all out I understood. You were within your rights, and you have behaved with decency and self-respect. I have nothing but unmitigated contempt for two people that continue to live together as a mere matter of habit and convenience. They are the real immoralists of the world, and the girls that ‘go wrong’ know it and laugh at the reformers. Of course I never had ceased to love you down deep, but it took just the course of conduct you pursued to make me known to myself. I realise that it is hopeless--too late. I never intended to betray myself, but I did so in an unguarded moment yesterday. Otherwise I never should have told you all this. I have realised since then that I have lost you irrevocably, but at least if I cannot be your wife I will be no man’s, and I shall continue to bear your name--and see you sometimes.”

Gregory, feeling as if he were being flayed, had dropped upon the edge of a chair and buried his face in his hands. When she finished he said hoarsely: “I never dreamed--I never imagined--I thought you incapable of real feeling----”

“I think I was then. And since--Well, you are only a man, after all, and I made you think what I chose until yesterday--Do you mean----” she added sharply, “that you did not guess--did not _know_ yesterday?”

“It never occurred to me. I thought you merely were flirting a little----”

“Hi!” cried Ida. Then she got back into her rôle. “It doesn’t matter,” she said with sad triumph. “I am glad I have told you. As for the future? You have convinced Butte that we are the best of friends. Stay away if you wish unless I give an entertainment where your absence would cause too much comment. You don’t want to marry again, but you may feel yourself as free as air. And one day--when you are worn out, tired of the everlasting struggle in which you moneymakers work harder than the day labourer, with his eight-hour laws and freedom from the terrific responsibilities of money; when you begin to break and want a home, I will make one for you. There is the doorbell. Lord John is coming for lunch. I shall give him his dismissal--once for all.”

Gregory stood up and took her hand. He had a vague masculine sense of unfairness somewhere but he could not begin to define it, and he was as deeply impressed as discouraged. “You are a grand woman, Ida,” he said. “This is not an hour that any man forgets. I wish that you might be happy.”

“Nature never intended that people on this planet should be happy--only in spots, anyhow. And don’t worry about me. You have put me in the way of getting a great deal out of this old game we call life, and I am grateful to you. Good-bye.”

They shook hands and Gregory went out into the hall as the maid was admitting Lord John. This time the men made no pretence at politeness. They merely glared and passed.

XXI

The Primo vein had been recovered some time since and Ora had traversed the fault drift twice and watched the drilling from the station; not only to assert her rights as mistress of the mine but to experience the sensations she had anticipated. She soon discovered that when a woman is in love, and the issue doubtful, other interests fail to provide sensations. But she went down into the mine every day and roamed through the older workings. She was tormented and restless, but by no means without hope; and this being the case she sometimes wondered why she continued to write to Valdobia as if nothing had occurred to interfere with their tacit engagement. It was her duty to tell him the truth, at once, but she switched off all other currents every Saturday morning and wrote her Roman long gay tantalising letters; being gifted as a scribe, like so many women, she made them notable with amusing and enlightening incidents of mining-camp life.

She had not seen Gregory since Monday evening. He had gone suddenly to Butte on the morning following the visit of the geologists, and had telephoned her that he should take the afternoon train to the Capital and no doubt be detained for several days. She had expected that he would telephone or telegraph from Helena; that he would write was too much to expect; she had never seen his handwriting. But he had not recognised her existence.

Four days after his departure she went down into her mine and walked as far as the ragged opening blasted by the Apex men, thinking of Ida. How much longer would it be before Mowbray overcame her prejudices, and her own independent and proud spirit revolted under her husband’s complete indifference? Few women were given such an opportunity for revenge both subtle and open as Mowbray was offering to Ida Compton.

It was at this point in her reflections that Ora heard a light footfall coming down the fault drift of Perch of the Devil. Without an instant’s hesitation she descended the short ladder that had been placed between the two drifts for the benefit of the geologists, and relit her candle. She met Gregory in the little station. He also held a candle, but he was so startled at the apparition that he dropped it. She thrust the point of her candlestick into a wooden post.

“I was going over to see you,” he said unsteadily as he picked up his candle, relighted it, and mechanically followed her example. He turned abruptly and walked half way up the drift and back, while she stood still, shivering with anxiety. Something had put his determined serenity out of joint. A crisis impended. She felt her unsteadiness and sat down suddenly on the edge of an ore car, fancying this dimly lighted room and the black passage leading to it looked as a death-house cell must look on the eve of execution.

Finally she stammered: “What is it? Please tell me?”

He leaned against the wall in front of her. “I am afraid it’s all up,” he said lifelessly. “I went in on Tuesday to ask Ida to obtain a divorce. She refused to listen. She has no wish to remarry and will have none of divorce. Nothing could have been more definite than our interview.”

“But--but surely in time--if we have patience----”

“There is no hope. Mowbray entered as I left. She intended to dismiss him at once.”

Ora, without reasoning, of which she was incapable at the moment, felt that he had been convinced by more than argument and mere words. She flung her arms over her lap and dropping her head upon them burst into a wild transport of tears and sobs; she was so unused to all expression of emotion that she neither knew nor cared how to control it, and the tears swept out the floodgates that had held her passion in check.

She looked up suddenly and saw Gregory standing over her with twitching face and clenched hands; and exulting in the complete abandonment of all the controls that civilisation has bred, she sprang to her feet, flung herself into his arms and her own arms about his neck. She had her immediate reward, for he nearly crushed her, and he kissed her until they both were breathless and reeling.

This was the passion she had read and dreamed of; for once the realities were commensurate; instinct warned her to postpone argument and prolong the moment to its utmost. There was room in her brain for the doubt if such a moment ever could come again, so little of love-making is wholly unpremeditated. So she clung to him and kissed him, and in that dim cavern his dark face, so reminiscent of those great prehistoric races that interested him, looked as he felt, primeval man that had found his mate.

But, whatever his ancient inheritance, he was the immediate product of a highly practical civilisation. His keen calculating brain sent a lightning flash across his passion. He lifted her off her feet and sat her down on the ore car. Then he took a candlestick in either hand.

“Come to the other station,” he said peremptorily, and led the way to a less dangerous seclusion.

He was half way up the fault drift before Ora, subdued but rebellious, stooped mechanically and found the veil that she wore in place of a hat when in the mines. She followed him slowly. She felt rather than reasoned that she had missed her opportunity and wished angrily that she had had lovers and knew better how to manage men. By the time she reached the shaft station the confusion in her mind had lifted somewhat and she had arrived at the conclusion that she could not overcome him in the same way again, but must use her brains. She sat down on the box and smoothed her hair with apparent unconcern.

Gregory had disposed of the two candlesticks and said, his voice still unsteady: “There isn’t much to say, but I want to have my last interview with you in my mine. I cannot get away from here for two or three days. Will you leave at once?”

“Will you listen to me? I have my right to be heard?”

“What is there to say?”

She clasped her hands in her lap and looked up at him. Gregory sighed and set his teeth. She looked surpassingly lovely and rather helpless--women, at their best, always seemed to him pathetic.

“Gregory,” she said, “you don’t doubt that I love you?”

“No. But what is the use? Do you suppose I am going to make you my mistress--all Montana would know it in less than no time. I’m no saint, but it wouldn’t work--not for us!”

“But you want me?”

“Oh!” He turned away, then swung round upon her. She had stood up. Her head was bent forward. “You should help me out!” he cried angrily. “Can’t you see--it’s you I’m thinking of. Do you suppose I want all the sporting women in Butte making horrible jokes about you--all your friends cutting you? What’s a man good for if he doesn’t protect a woman?”

“Love affairs have lasted for years without being found out.”

“Precious seldom. And we are not buried in a big city. I must live out here and you would either have to live out here too, or I should be sneaking into your house in Butte. A business-like intrigue! Remember I lived somewhat before I married. Sentiment and romance soon evaporate----”

“Oh, yes, that is always what I have thought when I have read the American novelists’ attempts to portray what they call a ‘guilty love’. The only word that expresses it delicately is _liaison_, and the setting should be foreign as well. There is no background here. We are still under the drab shadow of Puritanism. I have heard it estimated that twenty-five thousand American women go abroad every year to indulge in a fleeting _liaison_ that gives them courage to endure the desperately material and commonplace life of this country for another year. You don’t understand that because you never have been in Europe. But Egypt--Italy--in Southern Europe anywhere--with its unbridled beauties of nature and its far more poetic beauties that centuries of art have given it--and a thousand years of love behind us--Oh, cannot you imagine how wonderful love would be? Do you think _I_ should ever want to come back?”

Gregory was staring at her. “Do you mean,” he stammered, “that you would sacrifice your reputation openly--your future--do you care enough for that?”

“I mean I love you so exclusively that I wish I had a thousand times more to sacrifice.”

“But--but--there are always Americans travelling--and you know many Europeans----”

“They are always easy to avoid. There are villas with walls, and pink flowers on top of the walls. And we could travel and see the wonders of art when the tourist season was over. Nor would I monopolise you. You could have the society of men of brains and achievement everywhere.”

He continued to stare at her radiant wistful face. He had known that she loved him, but it had never occurred to him that she would be willing to give up the world for his sake. She was a proud woman, an aristocrat, she had an exceptional position everywhere; the great world when they parted stood ready to offer its consolations.

She had unrolled a heavenly vision! His mind had revolted from debasing her to the status of what is euphemistically known in the West as “sporting women”; he also remembered the immediate disillusionments of his younger manhood and wondered if the hideousness of Butte had been responsible. The Mediterranean with its ancient civilisations flourishing and forgotten before the historic period, Egypt, full-grown offspring of a still more ancient but vanished civilisation--both called to that archæological instinct so closely allied to the geological, made him fancy he heard faint ancestral voices. Ora’s eyes were holding his, and her gaze was as powerful as his own. For the moment he no longer was a son of the newest section of the newest world. The turquoise waters of the Mediterranean spread before him, but he saw it alive with galleys----

He jerked his eyes away, folded his arms and stared downward. He must think rationally, not with vapours in his brain. It might be that he would be more than fool to sacrifice to any consideration the one chance for happiness in perfect union that life would offer him.

Suddenly he became aware that he was staring at the rocky floor of his mine, of its first level; the flickering candle flames revealed bits of bright yellow metal. And below was the second level with its superb shoot of copper ore ten feet wide. And below, on the third level, still was the vein far more beautiful than virgin gold. And down--down--in those vast unlocked caverns--what mysteries--what wonder-ores might not the earth harbour for him alone to find and name----

“What are you thinking of?” cried Ora sharply. Then she threw out her arms wildly. “I know! I know! It is those accursed ores! Oh, God! What have I in me, I, a mere woman, to compensate for the loss of a mine? I was a fool--Of course! Of course!”

But Gregory, although his blood had frozen in his veins at the horrid vision of a permanent divorce from his mine, would make no such admission.

“Ora,” he said quietly, “it would be very wonderful--for about three months. You would despise me if I were content to dawdle away my life in an olive grove, or throw away my best years and these great energies nature has given me, doing nothing in that old civilisation in which I could find no place. And in time you would resent the weakness that had stranded you with no recourse in life but myself. That sort of thing has never been a success and never will be, because nature did not make man to live on love alone, and it is much the same with the intellectual woman. It wouldn’t work. Not with us. I have known from the beginning that it must be marriage or nothing. And Ida would not divorce me if I ran away with you. She would be entitled to her revenge and she would take it.” He leaned forward and signalled the station call. “Please take the skip when it comes. I am going below.” And he ran down the ladder.

XXII

Ora got into the skip and was whisked to the surface.

She drew the veil over her head and face, wishing dimly that she had gone home through the mines; but a moment later the veil fell to her shoulders unnoticed. As she crossed the Apex claim she was vaguely aware that someone, almost in her path, lifted his hat. She bowed automatically, feeling like those poor wound-up royalties who must smile graciously upon their loyal people even though a cancer devour the body or the brain reel with sorrow.

Whalen, abnormal in vanity and conceit though he was, took no offence; not only was this in his estimation the one great lady of the Western annex, but he was startled by the expression in her fixed eyes of anguish, terror, and surprise. He had seen Gregory Compton go down into his mine not a half an hour ago, and it was easy for his fictionised if unimaginative mind to conjure up a hazy picture of the scene underground. He turned very red, partly from gratification at being so close to human passion and pain, but more from the knowledge that he shortly could offer all the elements for another and a still more dramatic crisis. At the same time he could do the one woman he admired in this wilderness a good turn and heal his cankerous ache for vengeance.

Ora went on to her little house and sank into a chair before the burnt-out logs. Her body felt as if it were a vessel into which had been poured all the waters of woman’s bitterness and despair. Nevertheless, her predominant sensation was astonishment. For a year she had lived in a fool’s paradise, indissolubly mated with Gregory Compton. It was only in the moment when the idea of his own divorce flashed into her mind that she realised she had meant to have him for ever, that her imagination had been a mere playground on which she had romped, and abruptly abandoned when she saw reality standing at the gate.

Since that day, interrupted only by the fevers and doubts of love, she had accepted with joy her predestined fate as the visible mate of Gregory Compton. Else what did it all mean? She had counted on marriage, but that respectable solution had faded into utter insignificance as soon as the shock of Ida’s refusal had passed. To fling the world aside, to regard it as a mere whirling speck in the void, followed as a matter of course. She and this man would fill all space.

And she had lost. It was over. _Over. Over._ For a time the astonishment consequent upon the mental reiteration of this fact held her. Her mind, quick, alert, sinuous as she had always found it, was unable to readjust itself. How could anything be over that manifestly had been created to go on for ever? What, then, did it all mean: that mutual recognition when they had sat together that night in Butte, that long mental obsession, this later perfect understanding, this indubitable power to find in each other complete happiness? Over. And by the man’s decree. How odd. How odd. And what a tragic waste.

She knew that the mine had pulled him, but she was too much the woman to take a mine seriously. There had been some other reason. He loved her; she never doubted that. He had resisted--why? She groped back through her limited experience, wondering if the trouble were that she had had so little. Life had not begun with her until a year ago. She had been a mere student, deliberately living in the unreal, often deluding, world of books, the worst of all preparations for life.

Some women were independent of experience, knew men by instinct. She felt that Ida, in a similar situation, would have had her way. She had not managed cleverly; no doubt with all her charm and her natural allurement for men, even a certain acquired coquetry, she was one of those women that could theorise brilliantly, but failed utterly to manage their own affairs at critical moments.

She was well aware that she had not been developing along ideal lines of late, particularly since she had come out here with the unadmitted intention of stealing her friend’s husband. By all the laws of tradition she should be wicked all through. Pride, diffidence, fastidiousness--one or all, she was in no condition to decide--had prevented her from playing the deliberate rôle of siren. She sighed and wished that life could be played upon the formula adopted by so many brilliant novelists: a steady unrelenting development of character upon strictly logical lines and by means of cunningly created situations, that was as much like life as a mother’s formula would be for the thoughts and deeds of her children at a given hour a year hence.

Ora did not know that most people in their rare moments of honest introspection find themselves singularly imperfect. She had looked for greater consistency in her complex recesses; assuming that if she made up her mind to take the husband of any woman, and that woman her best friend, she would be wholly hard and wicked, and, for the sake of the result, quite willing to achieve this consistent imperfection. And such hardness would be the surest of all solaces in the event of failure. She felt neither hard nor nearly as wicked as she should, but she did recognise the fact that if she had one more chance she would win by hook or crook.

Her thoughts swung to Ida. What had she said to Gregory in that last decisive interview? Ida was as clever as the devil. She would watch her chance and make just the right appeal at the right moment. Gregory could be ruthless to the woman of whom he had wearied or to the woman he loved, but if his wife played upon his honour, his Western chivalry, his sense of fair play, and reiterated her own rights--to her would he lower his flag if it struck the life out of his own heart, and left himself nothing to feed the deep passion and romance of his nature for the rest of his life.

In any case Ida had won.

Once more Ora wished that she had gone to work when she found herself penniless after her father’s death. She would have developed normally, and it was unthinkable that in the little world of Butte she would not have met Gregory Compton while he was free. Then not only would she be happy today but know nothing of those abysmal depths in her soul which she execrated while yielding to them and lamenting that for the time being they were no worse. Love may be divine when all goes well, or one is born into the cult of the martyr, but when it comes too late to passionate natures associated with virile and accomplished minds, it can be the very spawn of hell. Ora’s regret that she was not of the breed of those finished wantons of history that rose to fame on the shattered hearts of men was born of expediency. Could she have been given her choice and Gregory Compton she would have elected to be fine and noble, consummating the lofty dictates of her superior intellectual endowment. Not yet had she realised that lacking a ruthless centralised ideal, rarely allied to brilliant intellects, the souls of women even more than those of men (who have less time and more poise) are the playthings of Circumstance.

She became aware that her Chinaman was crossing the room, and before she could refocus her wandering mental vision and intercept him, he had opened the front door and admitted Professor Whalen.

XXIII

Ida had broken a dinner engagement and sat alone in her library. She knew that Gregory had passed through Butte that day on his way from Helena to Pony; she had seen him leave the Block where his lawyers had their offices and jump into a waiting taxi. He was not the man to take a cab for anything but an imminent train. She had rushed home, but he had neither called nor telephoned. She reasoned that he would be more than man if he were not reluctant to see her again after their last embarrassing interview, that there was no cause for fresh doubts, and that there was literally nothing for her to do at present but continue to play her waiting game. But she felt both sad and nervous, and wondered if it were in her to despair, to “cut and run” like other women; or whether it might not be wise to absent herself for a time. Gregory was the sort of man to appreciate delicacy, and after an absence of two months they would meet quite naturally. She could visit Yellowstone and Glacier Park, and send him pleasant impersonal postcards.