“Are you—­Neale’s sweetheart?” she asked, very low.

“Oh—­please—­find him—­for me!” sobbed Allie.

The tenderness in this woman’s voice and look and touch was what Allie needed more than anything, and it made her a trembling child.  How strangely, hesitatingly, with closing eyes, this woman reached to fold her in gentle arms.  What a tumult Allie felt throbbing in the full breast where she laid her head.

“Allie Lee! ... and he thinks you dead,” she murmured, brokenly.  “I will bring him—­to you.”

When she released Allie years and shadows no longer showed in her face.  Her eyes were tear-wet and darkening; her lips were tremulous.  At that moment there was something beautiful and terrible about her.

But Allie could not understand.

“You stay here,” she said.  “Be very quiet ...  I will bring Neale.”

Opening the door, she paused on the threshold, to glance down the hall first, and then back to Allie.  Her smile was beautiful.  She closed the door and locked it.  Allie heard the soft swish of silk dying away.

26

Beauty Stanton threw a cloak over her bare shoulders and, hurriedly leaving the house by the side entrance, she stood a moment, breathless and excited, in the dark and windy street.

She had no idea why she halted there, for she wanted to run.  But the instant she got out into the cool night air a check came to action and thought.  Strange sensations poured in upon her—­the darkness, lonesome and weird; the wailing wind with its weight of dust; the roar of Benton’s main thoroughfare; and the low, strange murmur, neither musical nor mirthful, behind her, from that huge hall she called her home.  Stranger even than these emotions were the swelling and aching of her heart, the glow and quiver of her flesh, thrill on thrill, deep, like bursting pages of joy never before experienced, the physical sense of a touch, inexplicable in its power.

On her bare breast a place seemed to flush and throb and glow.  “Ah!” murmured Beauty Stanton.  “That girl laid her face here—­over my heart!  What was I to do?” she murmured.  “Oh yes—­to find her sweetheart—­Neale!” Then she set off rapidly, but if she had possessed wings or the speed of the wind she could not have kept pace with her thoughts.

She turned the corner of the main street and glided among the hurrying throng.  Men stood in groups, talking excitedly.  She gathered that there had been fights.  More than once she was addressed familiarly, but she did not hear what was said.  The wide street seemed strange, dark, dismal, the lights yellow and flaring, the wind burdened, the dark tide of humanity raw, wild animal, unstable.  Above the lights and the throngs hovered a shadow—­not the mantle of night nor the dark desert sky.

Her steps took familiar ground, yet she seemed not to know this Benton.

“Once I was like Allie Lee!” she whispered.  “Not so many years ago.”