As he lay back his hands loosed their hold of his coat and fell away all bloody.  The knife slid to the floor.  A crimson froth flecked his lips.

“Oh—­Heaven!  You were—­stabbed!” gasped Allie, sinking to her knees.

“If Stanton doesn’t come in time—­tell her what happened—­ask her to fetch Neale to you,” he said.  He spoke with extreme difficulty and a fluttering told of blood in his throat.  Allie could not speak.  She could not pray.  But her sight and her perception were abnormally keen.  Ancliffe’s strange, dear gaze rested upon her, and it seemed to Allie that he smiled, not with lips or face, but in spirit.  How strange and beautiful.

Then Allie heard a rush of silk at the door.  It opened—­closed.  A woman of fair face, bare of arm and neck, glittering with diamonds, swept into the parlor.  She had great, dark-blue eyes full of shadows and they flashed from Ancliffe to Allie and back again.

“What’s happened?  You’re pale as death! ...  Ancliffe!  Your hands—­ your breast! ...  My God!”

She bent over him.  “Stanton, I’ve been—­cut up—­and Hough is—­dead.”

“Oh, this horrible Benton!” cried the woman.

“Don’t faint ...  Hear me.  You remember we were curious about a girl —­Durade had in his place.  This is she—­Allie Lee.  She is innocent.  Durade held her for revenge.  He had loved—­then hated her mother ...  Hough won all Durade’s gold—­and then the girl ...  But we had to fight ...  Stanton, this Allie Lee is Neale’s sweetheart ...  He believes her dead ...  You hide her—­bring Neale to her.”

Quickly she replied, “I promise you, Ancliffe, I promise ...  How strange—­what you tell! ...  But not strange for Benton! ...  Ancliffe!  Speak to me!—­Oh, he is going!”

With her first words a subtle change passed over Ancliffe.  It was the release of his will.  His whole body sank.  Under the intense whiteness of his face a cold gray shade began to creep.  His last conscious instant spent itself in the strange gaze Allie had felt before, and now she had a vague perception that in some way it expressed a blessing and a deliverance.  The instant the beautiful light turned inward, as if to illumine the darkness of his soul, she divined what he had once been, his ruin, his secret and eternal remorse—­and the chance to die that had made him great.

So, forgetful of the other beside her, Allie Lee watched Ancliffe, sustained by a nameless spirit, feeling with tragic pity her duty as a woman—­to pray for him, to stay beside him, that he might not be alone when he died.

And while she watched, with the fading of that singular radiance, there returned to his face a slow, careless weariness.

“He’s gone!” murmured Stanton, rising.  A dignity had come to her.  “Dead!  And we knew nothing of him—­not his real name—­nor his place ...  But even Benton could not keep him from dying like an English gentleman.”

She took Allie by the hand, led her out of the parlor and across the hall into a bedroom.  Then she faced Allie, wonderingly, with all a woman’s sympathy, and something else that Allie sensed as a sweet and poignant wistfulness.