“Ed! Ed!” she now sobbed. “Please! Please! Won’t you understand how it is? They have watched every entrance every time we’ve gone out since I came here. It doesn’t make any difference which door you come through. They have men at every end. I didn’t know anything about it until I went upstairs. Really, I didn’t. Oh, I wish I could get out of all this! I’m so sick of it all. I told you that I’m fond of you, and I am. Oh, I’m almost crazy! I wish sometimes that I could die, I’m so sick of everything. My life’s a shabby mess, and now you’ll hate me all the time,” and she rocked to and fro in a kind of misery, and cried silently as she did so. Gregory stared at her, amazed but unbelieving. “Yes,” he insisted, “I know. The same old stuff, but I don’t believe it. You’re lying now, just as you have been all along. You think by crying and pretending to feel sad that you might get another chance to trick me, but you won’t. I’m out of this to-day, once and for all, and I’m through with you. There’s no use in my appealing to the police under this administration, or I’d do that. But I want to tell you this. If you follow me any longer, or any of this bunch around here, I’m going to the newspapers. There’ll be some way of getting this before the courts somewhere, and I’ll try it. And if you really were on the level and wanted to do anything, there’s a way, all right, but you wouldn’t do it if you had a chance, never, not in a million years. I know you wouldn’t.” “Oh, Ed! Ed! You don’t know me, or how I feel, or what I’ll do,” she whimpered. “You haven’t given me a chance. Why don’t you suggest something, if you don’t believe me, and see?” “Well, I can do that easily enough,” he replied sternly. “I can call that bluff here and now. Write me out a confession of all that’s been going on here. Let me hear you dictate it to a stenographer, and then come with me to a notary public or the district attorney, and swear to it. Now we’ll see just how much there is to this talk about caring for me,” and he watched her closely, the while she looked at him, her eyes drying and her sobs ceasing. She seemed to pause emotionally and stare at the floor in a speculative, ruminative mood. “Yes? Well, that’s different, isn’t it? I see how it is now. You didn’t think I’d have just the thing to call your bluff with, did you? And just as I thought, you won’t do it. Well, I’m onto you now, so good-day. I have your measure at last. Good-by!” and he started off.