She might
yield to that cold Allison Lee's dictation. In happy surroundings
her beauty and sweetness would bring a crowd of lovers to her.
"But that's all--only natural," muttered Neale, in perplexity. "I
want her to forget--to be happy--to find a home.... For her to grow
old--alone! No! She must love some man--marry--"
And with the spoken words Neale's heart contracted. He knew that he
lied to himself. If she ever cared for another man, that would be
the end of Warren Neale. But then, he was ended, anyhow. Jealousy,
strange, new, horrible, added to Neale's other burdens, finished
him. He had the manhood to try to fight selfishness, but he had
failed to subdue it; and he had nothing left to fight his consuming
love and hatred of life and terrible loneliness and that fierce
thing--jealousy. He had saved Allie Lee! Why had he given her up? He
had stained his hands with blood for her sake. And that awful moment
came back to him when, maddened by the sting of a bullet, he had
gloried in the cracking of Durade's bones, in the ghastly terror and
fear of death upon the Spaniard's face, in the feel of the knife-
blade as he forced Durade to stab himself. Always Neale had been
haunted by this final scene of his evil life in the construction
camps. A somber and spectral shape, intangible, gloomy-faced, often,
attended him in the shadow.
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