"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. "Poor girl," he said as he watched her vanishing from sight, "if only she had ever had a show!" He looked back at Mrs. Dick's. Bostwick had ousted him after all, before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertain whether Beth were angry or not--before he could bid her good-by. Now that the cool of evening was upon him, along with the chill of sober reflection, he feared for what he had done. He was as mad, as crude as Queenie. Yet his fear of Beth's opinion was a sign that he loved her as a woman should be loved, sacredly, and with a certain awe, although he made no such analysis, and took no credit to himself for the half regrets that persistently haunted his reflections. It would be a moonlight night, he pondered. He had counted on riding by the lunar glow to the "Laughing Water" claim. Would Beth, by any possibility, attempt to see him--come out, perhaps, in the moonlight--for a word before he should go? He could not entertain a thought of departing without again beholding her. He wanted to know what she would say, and when he might see her again. After all, what was the hurry to depart? He might as well wait a little longer. He went to the hay-yard. Dave had disappeared. Half an hour of search failed to bring him to light. On the point of entering a restaurant to allay his sense of emptiness, Van was suddenly accosted by a wild-eyed man, bare-headed and sweating, who ran at him, calling as he came. "Hey!" he cried. "Van Buren! Come on! Come on! She's dyin' and all she wants is you!" "What's wrong with you, man?" inquired the horseman, halted by the fellow's words. "What are you talking about?" "Queenie!" gasped the fellow, panting for his breath. "Took poison--O, Lord! Come on! Come on! She don't want nothing but you!" Van turned exceedingly pale. "Poison? What you want is the doctor!"