"I left out the fact that I was crazy that night," said Virginia. "I read in a book once that a woman is so constituted that she can’t see reason in anything which does not coincide with her desires. I saw only one thing that night that was worth considering. I saw only the awful suffering of my mother and the chance to put an end to it by getting hold of that man’s money. Do you understand now? I went there for that purpose. I’d have laid down my life for it. When those men came he urged me to run and hide in his room, as he and I stood on the veranda, and it was not fear of exposure that drove me up the stairs holding to his hand. It was the almost appalling fear that the promised money would slip through my fingers if I didn’t obey him to the letter. And when he whispered, with his hot breath in my ear, there in his room, as his friends were loudly knocking at the door below, that he would rid himself of them and come back, and asked me if I’d wait, I said yes, as I would, have said it to God in heaven. Then he asked me if it was ’_a promise_,’ and I said yes again. Then he asked me, Mrs. Boyd, he asked me—" Virginia’s voice died out. She fell to quivering from head to foot. "Well, well, go on!" Ann said, under her breath. "Go on. What did he ask you?" Virginia hesitated for another minute, then, with her face red with shame, she said: "He asked me to prove it by—kissing him—kissing him of my own free will. I hesitated, I think. Yes, I hesitated, but I heard the steps of the men in the hall below at the foot of the stairs. I thought of the money, Mrs. Boyd, and I kissed him." "You did?" "Yes. I did—there, _in his room_!" "Well, I’m glad you told me that," Ann breathed, deeply. "I think I understand it better now. I understand how you feel." "So you see, all that’s what I’d have to tell Luke King," Virginia said; "and I’ll never do it—never on this earth. I want him always to think of me as he does right now." Ann locked her big hands in her lap and bent forward.