“It will soon be night.  We have much to do.  I suppose I may see you, privately—­even here?”

Beth was helpless.  And in the circumstances she wished for Van to go.

“Certainly,” she answered, raising her eyes for a second to the horseman’s, “—­that is—­if——­”

“Certainly,” Van answered cordially.  “Good-by.”  He advanced and held out his hand.

She gave him her own because there was nothing else to do—­and the tingling of his being made it burn.  She did not dare to meet his gaze.

“So long, Searle,” he added smilingly.  “Better turn that grouch out to pasture.”

Then he went.

CHAPTER XX

QUEENIE

The shadows of evening met Van, as he stepped from the outside door and started up the street.  Then a figure emerged from the shadows and met him by the corner.

It was Queenie.  Her eyes were red from weeping.  A smile that someway affected Van most poignantly, he knew not why, came for a moment to her lips.

“You didn’t expect to see me here,” she said.  “I had to come to see if it was so.”

“What is it, Queenie?  What do you mean?  What do you want?” he answered.  “What’s the trouble?”

“Nothing,” she said.  “I don’t want nothing I can git—­I guess—­unless—­Oh, is it her, Van?  Is it sure all over with me?”

“Look here,” he said, not unkindly, “you’ve always been mistaken, Queenie.  I told you at the time—­that time in Arizona—­I’d have done what I did for an Indian squaw—­for any woman in the world.  Why couldn’t you let it go at that?”

“You know why I couldn’t,” she answered with a certain intensity of utterance that gave him a species of chill.  “After what you done—­like the only real friend I ever had—­I belonged to you—­and couldn’t even take myself away.”

“But I didn’t want anyone to belong to me, Queenie.  You know that.  I could barely support my clothes.”

Her eyes burned with a strange luminosity.  Her utterance was eager.

“But you want somebody to belong to you now?  Ain’t that what’s the matter with you now?”

He did not answer directly.

“I didn’t think it was in you, Queenie, to follow me around and play the spy.  I’ve liked you pretty well—­but—­I couldn’t like this.”

She stared at him helplessly, as an animal might have looked.

“I couldn’t help it,” she murmured, repressing some terrible emotion of despair.  “I won’t never trouble you no more.”

She turned around and went away, walking uncertainly, as if from physical weakness and the blindness of pain.

Van felt himself inordinately wrung—­felt it a cruelty not to run and overtake her—­give her some measure of comfort.  There was nothing he could do that would not be misunderstood.  Moreover, he had no adequate idea of what was in her mind—­or in her homeless heart.  He had known her always as a butterfly; he could not take her tragically now.