Only the piercing pang of that memory remained with Beauty Stanton.
She was a part of Benton. She was treading the loose board-walk of
the great and vile construction camp. She might draw back from leer
and touch, but none the less was she there, a piece of this dark,
bold, obscure life. She was a cog in the wheel, a grain of dust in
the whirlwind, a morsel of flesh and blood for the hungry maw of a
wild and passing monster of progress.
Her hurried steps carried her on with her errand. Neale! She knew
where to find him. Often she had watched him play, always
regretfully, conscious that he did not fit there. His indifference
had baffled her as it had piqued her professional vanity. Men had
never been indifferent to her; she had seen them fight for her
mocking smiles. But Neale! He had been stone to her charm, yet kind,
gracious, deferential. Always she had felt strangely shamed when he
stood bareheaded before her. Beauty Stanton had foregone respect.
Yet respect was what she yearned for. The instincts of her girlhood,
surviving, made a whited sepulcher of her present life. She could
not bear Neale's indifference and she had failed to change it. Her
infatuation, born of that hot-bed of Benton life, had beaten and
burned itself to destruction against a higher and better love--the
only love of her womanhood.
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