Neale, aghast and full of bitter amaze and shame at himself, fled from the gambling-hall where he had struck Beauty Stanton. How beside himself with rage and torture he had been! That woman to utter Allie Lee's name! Inconceivable! Could she know his story?
He tramped the dark streets, and the exercise and the cool wind calmed him. Then the whistle of an engine made him decide to leave Benton at once, on the first train out. Hurriedly he got his baggage and joined the throng which even at that late hour was making for the station.
A regret that was pain burned deep in him--somehow inexplicable. He, like other men, had done things that must be forgotten. What fatality in the utterance of a single name--what power to flay!
From a window of an old coach he looked out upon the dim lights an
