"I had a talk with her one day," he said, feelingly. "I had been hunting with your gun and dogs, and stopped at her mother’s house to get a drink of water. Virginia was the only one at home, and she brought it to me in the little porch. I’ve met thousands of women, Langdon, but her beauty, grace, intelligence, and dazzling purity affected me as I never was before. I am old enough to be her father, but do you know what I thought as I sat there and talked to her? I thought that I’d give every dollar I had for the love and faith of such a girl—to leave this rotten existence here and settle down there in the mountains to earn my living by the sweat of my brow. It was almost the only silly dream I ever had, but it was soon over. A thousand times since that day, in the midst of all this false show and glitter, my mind has gone back to that wonderful girl. She’d read books I’d never had time to open, and talked about them as freely and naturally as I would about things of everyday life. No doubt she was famished for what all women, good or bad, love—the admiration of men—and so she listened eagerly to your slick tongue. Oh, I know what you said, and exactly how you said it. You’ve inherited that gift, my boy, but you’ve inherited something—perhaps from your mother—something that your father never had in his make-up—you’ve inherited a capacity for remorse, self-contempt, the throes of an outraged conscience. I’m a man of the world—I don’t go to church, I play cards, I race horses, I’ve gone all the gaits—but I know there is something in most men which turns their souls sick when they consciously commit crime. _Crime!_—yes, that’s it—don’t stop me. I used a strong word, but it must go. There are men who would ten thousand times rather shoot a strong, able-bodied man dead in his tracks than beguile a young girl to the brink of doom (of all ways) as you did—blinding her to her own danger by the holy desire to save her mother’s life, pulling her as it were by her very torn and bleeding heart-strings. God!" "Oh, don’t—don’t make it any worse than it is!" Langdon groaned. "What’s done’s done, and, if I’m down in the blackest depths of despair over it, what’s the use to kick me? I’m helpless. Do you know what I actually thought of doing this morning? I actually lay in bed and planned my escape. I wanted to turn on the gas, but I knew it would never do its work in that big, airy room." "Oh, don’t be a fool, Langdon!" Sively said, suddenly pulled around. "Never think of such a thing again. When a man that _is_ a man does a wrong, there is only one thing for him to do, and that is to set it right." "Set it right? But how?" Langdon cried, almost eagerly. "Why, there are several ways to make a stab at it, anyway," Sively said; "and that is better than wiping your feet on a gentle creature and then going off and smoking a gas-pipe. What I want to know is this: do you _love_ that girl, really and genuinely _love_ her?"