inanity of his life. And, oh, the pity of it! For Mr. Keen and I have
taken a--a curiously personal interest in you--in your case. I say, the
pity of it!"

Astounded, dumb under her stinging words, he rode beside her through the
brilliant sunshine, wheeled mechanically as she turned her horse, and
rode north again.

"And now--_now_!" she said passionately, "you turn on the woman you
loved! Oh, you are not worth it!"

"You are quite right," he said, turning very white under her scorn.
"Almost all you have said is true enough, I fancy. I amount to nothing;
I am idle, cynical, selfish. The emptiness of such a life requires a
stimulant; even a fool abhors a vacuum. So I drink--not so very much
yet--but more than I realize. And it is close enough to a habit to worry
me. . . . Yes, almost all you say is true; Kerns knows it; I know
it--now that you have told me. You see, he couldn't tell me, because I
should not have believed him. But I believe you--all you say, except one
thing. And that is only a glimmer of decency left in me--not that I make
any merit of it. No, it is merely instinctive. For I have _not_ turned
on the woman I loved."

Her face was pale as her level eyes met him:

"You said she was nothing to you. . . . Look there! Do you see her? Do
you see?"

Her voice broke nervously as he swung around to stare at a rider bearing
down at a gallop--a woman on a big roan, tearing along through the