She would have slaved for him. But he
had passed her by, absorbed with his own secret, working toward some
fateful destiny, lost, perhaps, like all the others there.
And now she learned that the mystery of him--his secret--was the
same old agony of love that sent so many on endless, restless roads
--Allie Lee! and he believed her dead!
After all the bitterness, life had moments of sweetest joy. Fate was
being a little kind to her--Beauty Stanton. It would be from her
lips Neale would hear that Allie Lee was alive--Beauty Stanton's
soul seemed to soar with the realization of how that news would
uplift Neale, craze him with happiness, change his life, save him.
He was going to hear the blessed tidings from a woman whom he had
scorned. Always afterward, then, he would think of Beauty Stanton
with a grateful heart. She was to be the instrument of his
salvation. Hough and Ancliffe had died to save Allie Lee from the
vile clutch of Benton; but to Beauty Stanton, the woman of ill-fame,
had been given the power. She gloried in it. Allie Lee was safely
hidden in her house. The iniquity of her establishment furnished a
haven for the body and life and soul of innocent Allie Lee. Beauty
Stanton marveled at the strange ways of life. If she could have
prayed, if she had ever dared to hope for some splendid duty, some
atonement to soften the dark, grim ending of her dark career, it
would not have been for so much as fate had now dealt to her.
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