Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/68

 be a place for you among them. I consider my liaison with you my uttermost degradation. I can never sink lower. Now wherever I go it must be upward."

He sat down in one of the veranda chairs, a pitiful, broken figure. A huge shapeless mass of fat and bone. He buried his head in his hands and sobbed like a child. He begged her to stay with him. He made her the most preposterous promises. He would build her a new house. Her room should be more exquisite than any suite at a hotel. But she only laughed.

"Poor fool!" she said as she entered the house and went upstairs to pack her things.

Monty Camp followed her. He took her into his arms.

"Mary," he said, "you are magnificent. We'll go away together."

"Despite the fact that you know I'm not decent?"

"Who cares? You have an ivory velvet body. You may be, as you claim, a lady of hell but in your arms I have found heaven."

On the veranda, Yekial Meigs sat and cursed. He had been trodden down into the dust of his farm. For a while he had walked about in a house made beautiful by a woman's presence. Now she was leaving him. It would be like turning off the light. He must live in darkness.

Mary Blaine and Monty Camp left for Chicago. Monty decided that that was a good base from which to operate. He was interested in numerous enterprises. He was a professional gambler and he knew that Chicago would present many opportunities.

Yekial Meigs had gone off into the fields. Nor did he return before they left. His life lay in ruins about him. He was a fool, a miserable fool. He never desired Mary as much as in that moment when he lost her. He made no attempt to work but simply lay flat on his back and shouted curses to God. He