Swing your honeys! Hurry up there! Just a-goin' to begin. What's the matter with you fellows? Wake up! a dance won't break you. Come on!

don't be a cheap skate. The girls are fine, fit and fairy-like, the music's swell and the floor's elegant. Come on, boys!"

There was a compelling power in his voice, and already a number of couples were waltzing round. The women were exquisite in their grace and springy lightness. They talked as they danced, gazing with languishing eyes and siren smiles at the man of the moment.

Some of them, who had not got partners, were picking out individuals from the crowd and coaxing them to come forward. A drunken fellow staggered onto the floor and grabbed a girl. She was young, dainty and pretty, but she showed no repugnance for him. Round and round he cavorted, singing and whooping, a wild, weird object; when, suddenly, he tripped and fell, bringing her down with him. The crowd roared; but the girl good-naturedly picked him up, and led him off to the bar.

A man in a greasy canvas suit with mucklucks on his feet had gone onto the floor. His hair was long and matted, his beard wild and rank. He was dancing vehemently, and there was the glitter of wild excitement in his eyes. He looked as if he had not bathed for years, but again I could see no repulsion in the face of the handsome brunette with whom he was waltzing. Dance after dance they had together, locked in each other's arms.

"That's a 'live one,'" said the Youth. "He's just come in from Dominion with a hundred ounces, and it won't last him over the night. Amber, there, will get it all. She won't let the other girls go near. He's her game."

Between dances the men promenaded to the bar and treated their companions to a drink. In the same free, trusting way they threw over their pokes to the bartender and had the price weighed out. The dances were very short, and the drinks very frequent.

Madder and madder grew the merriment. The air was hot; the odour of patchouli mingled with the stench of stale garments and the reek of alcohol. Men dripping with sweat whirled round in wild gyrations. Some of them danced beautifully; some merely shuffled over the floor. It did not make any difference to the girls. They were superbly muscular and used to the dragging efforts of novices. After a visit to the bar back they came once more, licking their lips, and fell to with fresh energy.

There was no need to beg the crowd now. A wave of excitement seemed to have swept over them. They clamoured to get a dance. The "live one"

whooped and pranced on his wild career, while Amber steered him calmly through the mazes of the waltz. Touch-the-button-Nell was talking to a tall fair-moustached man whom I recognised as a black-jack booster.

Suddenly she left him and came over to us. She went up to the Youth.

She had discarded her blond wig, and her pretty brown hair parted in the middle and rippled behind her ears. Her large violet-blue eyes had a devouring look that would stir the pulse of a saint. She accosted the Youth with a smile of particular witchery.

"Say, kid, won't you come and have a two-step with me? I've been looking at you for the last half-hour and wishing you'd ask me."

The Youth had advised me: "If any of them asks you, tell them to go to the devil;" but now he looked at her and his boyish face flushed.

"Nothing doing," he said stoutly.

"Oh, come now," she pleaded; "honest to goodness, kid, I've turned down the other fellow for you. You won't refuse me, will you? Come on; just one, sweetheart."

She was holding the lapels of his coat and dragging him gently forward.

I could see him biting his lip in embarrassment.

"No, thanks, I'm sorry," he stammered. "I don't know how to dance.

Besides, I've got no money."

She grew more coaxing.

"Never mind about the coin, honey. Come on, have one on me. Don't turn me down, I've taken such a notion to you. Come on now; just one turn."

I watched his face. His eyes clouded with emotion, and I knew the psychology of it. He was thinking:

"Just one--surely it wouldn't hurt. Surely I'm man enough to trust myself, to know when to quit. Oh, lordy, wouldn't it be sweet just to get my arm round a woman's waist once more! The sight of them's honey to me; surely it wouldn't matter. One round and I'll shake her and go home."

The hesitation was fatal. By an irresistible magnetism the Youth was drawn to this woman whose business it ever was to lure and beguile. By her siren strength she conquered him as she had conquered many another, and as she led him off there was a look of triumph on her face. Poor Youth! At the end of the dance he did not go home, nor did he "shake"

her. He had another and another and another. The excitement began to paint his cheeks, the drink to stoke wild fires in his eyes. As I stood deserted I tried to attract him, to get him back; but he no longer heeded me.

"I don't see the Madonna to-night," said a little, dark individual in spectacles. Somehow he looked to me like a newspaper man "chasing" copy.

"No," said one of the girls; "she ain't workin'. She's sick; she don't take very kindly to the business, somehow. Don't seem to get broke in easy. She's funny, poor kid."

Carelessly they went on to talk of other things, while I stood there gasping, staring, sick at heart. All my vinous joy was gone, leaving me a haggard, weary wretch of a man, disenchanted and miserable to the verge of--what? I shuddered. The lights seemed to have gone blurred and dim. The hall was tawdry, cheap and vulgar. The women, who but a moment before had seemed creatures of grace and charm, were now nothing more than painted, posturing harridans, their seductive smiles the leers of shameless sin.

And this was a Dawson dance-hall, the trump card in the nightly game of despoliation. Dance-halls, saloons, gambling-dens, brothels, the heart of the town was a cancer, a hive of iniquity. Here had flocked the most rapacious of gamblers, the most beautiful and unscrupulous women on the Pacific slope. Here in the gold-born city they waited for their prey, the Man with the Poke. Back there in the silent Wild, with pain and bloody sweat, he toiled for them. Sooner or later must he come within reach of their talons to be fleeced, flouted and despoiled. It was an organised system of sharpers, thugs, harpies, and birds of prey of every kind. It was a blot on the map. It was a great whirlpool, and the eddy of it encircled the furthest outpost of the golden valley. It was a vortex of destruction, of ruin and shame. And here was I, hovering on its brink, likely to be soon sucked down into its depths.

I pressed my way to the door, and stood there staring and swaying, but whether with wine or weakness I knew not. In the vociferous and flamboyant street I could hear the raucous voices of the spielers, the jigging tunes of the orchestras, the click of ivory balls, the popping of corks, the hoarse, animal laughter of men, the shrill, inane giggles of women. Day and night the game went on without abatement, the game of despoliation.

And I was on the verge of the vortex. Memories of Glengyle, the laughing of the silver-scaled sea, the tawny fisher-lads with their honest eyes, the herring glittering like jewels in the brown nets, the women with their round health-hued cheeks and motherly eyes. Oh, Home, with your peace and rest and content, can you not save me from this?

And as I stood there wretchedly a timid little hand touched my arm.

CHAPTER V

It is odd how people who have been parted a weary while, yet who have thought of each other constantly, will often meet with as little show of feeling as if they had but yesterday bid good-bye. I looked at her and she at me, and I don't think either of us betrayed any emotion. Yet must we both have been infinitely moved.

She was changed, desperately, pitifully changed. All the old sweetness was there, that pathetic sweetness which had made the miners call her the Madonna; but alas, forever gone from her was the fragrant flower of girlhood. Her pallor was excessive, and the softness had vanished out of her face, leaving there only lines of suffering. Sorrow had kindled in her grey eyes a spiritual lustre, a shining, tearless brightness. Ah me, sad, sad, indeed, was the change in her!

So she looked at me, a long and level look in which I could see neither love nor hate. The bright, grey eyes were clear and steady, and the pinched and pitiful lips did not quiver. And as I gazed on her I felt that nothing ever would be the same again. Love could no more be the radiant spirit of old, the prompter of impassioned words, the painter of bewitching scenes. Never again could we feel the world recede from us as we poised on bright wings of fancy; never again compare our joy with that of the heaven-born; never again welcome that pure ideal that comes to youth alone, and that pitifully dies in the disenchantment of graver days. We could sacrifice all things for each other; joy and grieve for each other; live and die for each other,--but the Hope, the Dream, the exaltation of love's dawn, the peerless white glory of it--had gone from us forever and forever.

Her lips moved:

"How you have changed!"

"Yes, Berna, I have been ill. But you, you too have changed."

"Yes," she said very slowly. "I have been--dead."

There was no faltering in her voice, never a throb of pathos. It was like the voice of one who has given up all hope, the voice of one who has arisen from the grave. In that cold mask of a face I could see no glimmer of the old-time joy, the joy of the season when wild roses were aglow. We both were silent, two pitifully cold beings, while about us the howling bedlam of pleasure-plotters surged and seethed.

"Come upstairs where we can talk," said she. So we sat down in one of the boxes, while a great freezing shadow seemed to fall and wrap us around. It was so strange, this silence between us. We were like two pale ghosts meeting in the misty gulfs beyond the grave.

"And why did you not come?" she asked.

"Come--I tried to come."

"But you did not." Her tone was measured, her face averted.

"I would have sold my soul to come. I was ill, desperately ill, nigh to death. I was in the hospital. For two weeks I was delirious, raving of you, trying to get to you, making myself a hundred times worse because of you. But what could I do? No man could have been more helpless. I was out of my mind, weak as a child, fighting for my life. That was why I did not come."

When I began to speak she started. As I went on she drew a quick, choking breath. Then she listened ever so intently, and when I had finished a great change came over her. Her eyes stared glassily, her head dropped, her hands clutched at the chair, she seemed nigh to fainting. When she spoke her voice was like a whisper.

"And they lied to me. They told me you were too eager gold-getting to think of me; that you were in love with some other woman out there; that you cared no more for me. They lied to me. Well, it's too late now."

She laughed, and the once tuneful voice was harsh and grating. Still were her eyes blank with misery. Again and again she murmured: "Too late, too late."

Quietly I sat and watched her, yet in my heart was a vast storm of agony. I longed to comfort her, to kiss that face so white and worn and weariful, to bring tears to those hopeless eyes. There seemed to grow in me a greater hunger for the girl than ever before, a longing to bring joy to her again, to make her forget. What did it all matter? She was still my love. I yearned for her. We both had suffered, both been through the furnace. Surely from it would come the love that passeth understanding. We would rear no lily walls, but out of our pain would we build an abiding place that would outlast the tomb.