“Then you must have stopped them. You were horrified enough to know that I had dared to take the only honest way left me to make a living. I know you, Randolph Pinkney! You'd rather see Joaquin Muriatta, the Mexican bandit, standing before you to-night with a revolver, than the helpless, shamed, miserable Mornie Nixon. And you can't help yourself, unless you throw me over the cliff. Perhaps you'd better,” she said, with a bitter laugh that faded from her lips as she leaned, pale and breathless, against the bowlder.
“Ruth will tell you—” began Rand.
“D—n Ruth!”
Rand turned away.
“Stop!” she said suddenly, staggering to her feet. “I'm sick—for all I know, dying. God grant that it may be so! But, if you are a man, you will help me to your cabin—to some place where I can lie down NOW, and be at rest. I'm very, very tired.”
She paused. She would have fallen again; but Rand, seeing more in her face than her voice interpreted to his sullen ears, took her sullenly in his arms, and carried her to the cabin. Her eyes glanced around the bright party-colored walls, and a faint smile came to her lips as she put aside her bonnet, adorned with a companion pinion of the bright wings that covered it.
“Which is Ruth's bed?” she asked.
Rand pointed to it.
“Lay me there!”
Rand would have hesitated, but, with another look at her face, complied.