"Yes. That meeting made a turning-point in my life. You've told me that whatever is best in you, you owe to him. Well, knowing him as I do, I can believe it; and if it's true, then it's the same with me; for first he, and then you, have made another man out of me." "Ah, naw! Bonaventure, may_be_; but not me; ah, naw!" "But I tell you, yes! you, Josephine! I'm poor sort enough yet; but I could have done things once that I can't do now. There was a time when if some miserable outlaw stood, or even seemed, maybe, to stand between me and my chances for happiness, I could have handed him over to human justice, so called, as easy as wink; but now? No, never any more! Josephine, I know that man whose picture I've just looked at. I could see you avenged. I could lay my hands, and the hands of the law, on him inside of twenty-four hours. You say you can't marry till the law has laid its penalties on him, or at least while he lives and escapes them. Is that right?" Zosephine had set her face to oppose his words only with unyielding silence, but the answer escaped her: "Yass, _'tis_ so. 'Tis ri-ght!" "No, Josephine. I know you _feel_ as if it were; but you don't _think_ so. No, you don't; I know you better in this matter than you know yourself, and you don't think it's right. You know justice belongs to the State, and that when you talk to yourself about what _you_ owe to justice, it means something else that you're too sweet and good to give the right name to, and still want it. You don't want it; you don't want revenge, and here's the proof; for, Josephine, you know, and I know, that if I--even without speaking--with no more than one look of the eye--should offer to buy your favor at that price, even ever so lawfully, you'd thank me for one minute, and then loathe me to the end of your days." Zosephine's face had lost its hardness. It was drawn with distress. With a gesture of repulsion and pain she exclaimed: "I di'n' mean--I di'n' mean--Ah!" "What? private revenge? No, of course you didn't! But what else would it be? O Josephine! don't I know you didn't mean it? Didn't I tell you so? But I want you to go farther. I want you to put away forever the _feeling_. I want to move and stand between you and it, and say--whatever it costs me to say it--'God forbid!' I do say it; I say it now. I can't say more; I can't say less; and somehow,--I don't know how--wherever you learned it--I've learned it from you." Zosephine opened her lips to refuse; but they closed and tightened upon each other, her narrowed eyes sent short flashes out upon his, and her breath came and went long and deep without sound. But at his last words she saw--the strangest thing--to be where she saw it--a tear--_tears_--standing in his eyes; saw them a moment, and then could see them no more for her own. Her lips relaxed, her form drooped, she lifted her face to reply, but her mouth twitched; she could not speak.