It is strange what illogical creatures we are! Up to that moment I had been sorry for Nina. Every day I liked her more. And I saw with a sore heart the wondering, dazed admiration grow within her for her new master. Love is one of the most primeval passions of the race. It is likely to be stronger—grander or more devastating—with primitive people than with those of us who have been civilized away from the parent type. I knew that Nina was falling in love with Norman in a way no woman of our class ever could. He had taken her into a fairy land and she could not, I felt, help expecting the fairy denouement. But the hint of the possibility of his really acting the part of the fairy prince, switched me about entirely. Nina became a negligible quantity. I worried only for him. It is needless to repeat the arguments against such a marriage which flooded me. They will occur to anyone. But to oppose it—I knew Norman too well—to try that. "Perhaps that would be the best solution of the matter—for her." "And for me?" he insisted. "Well. You’re in a better position than I to decide that." He laughed and leaned forward and pinched her ear. Suddenly she forgot the stage and getting up—reckless of all observers,—came back and kissed him. "Nina," I asked, "if I pinched your ear, would you kiss me?" "No," she said, convincingly. "I’d slap your face." "There’s only one thing I know about this, Arnold," he said when she had returned to her seat. "It’s bringing me to life again. I don’t think I had really laughed for months. I’d forgotten there was such a thing as amusement in the world. I never was very strong on play. Of one thing I’m sure. It’s giving me a new insight—a new point of view—into lots of things. Only God knows how it will turn out." *VI* I can only guess how it would have turned out, if Nina had not fallen among thieves. The most insoluble mystery of life is the way in which the very highest human values sometimes spring out of the coarsest, most brutal wrongs. Although to Nina, I had spoken of Blackie in a flippant tone, I knew that he might cause trouble. I had spoken seriously about it to Norman, advising him to avoid as much as possible, and especially after dark, those parts of town, where Blackie’s gang was likely to be encountered. And together we had impressed on Nina and Guiseppe that she was never to go out alone. But as nothing was heard from him for some time, we all began to worry less. Nina had been with us about three weeks when the storm broke. I came home from my work about five one afternoon—and found bedlam. Guiseppe’s head was wrapped in a bloody bandage, Nina was sobbing wildly on the divan.