"Oh, I think you needn't worry about that. I'll keep out, thank you; imprisonment for debt don't go nowadays." "Debt?" "I'm a theatrical manager, my girl, and I'm not on the inside: which is another way of saying that a man who can't swim has fallen overboard." "And when you do go down--" "A little less exultation, my dear, or I might suppose you'd be glad when I do." "Well, when you know yourself going down for the last time, do you mean to tell me you won't grasp at a straw like--like this?" I nodded toward the open window, and the desk with all its papers tumbling out. "Not much." He shook his head, and bit the end of a cigar with sharp, white teeth. "It's a fool graft. I'm self-respecting. And I don't admire fools." He lit his cigar and puffed a minute, taking out his watch to look at it, as cold-bloodedly as though we were waiting, he and I, to go to supper together. Oh, how I hated him! "Honesty isn't the best policy," he went on; "it's the only one. The vain fool that gets it into his head--or shall I say her head? No? Well, no offense, I assure you--his head then, that he's smarter than a world full of experience, ought to be put in jail--for his own protection; he's too big a jay to be left out of doors. For five thousand years, more or less, the world has been putting people like him behind bars, where they can't make asses of themselves. Yet each year, and every day and every hour, a new ninny is born who fancies he's cleverer than all his predecessors put together. Talk about suckers! Why, they're giants of intellect compared to the mentally lop-sided that five thousand years of experience can't teach. When the criminal-clown's turn comes, he hops, skips and jumps into the ring with the old, old gag. He thinks it's new, because he himself is so fresh and green. 'Here I am again,' he yells, 'the fellow that'll do you up. Others have tried it. They're dead in jail or under jail-yards. But me--just watch me!' We do, and after a little we put him with his mates and a keeper in a barred kindergarten where fools that can't learn, little moral cripples of both sexes, my dear, belong. Bah!" He puffed out the smoke, throwing his head back, in a cloud toward the ceiling. I sprang from my seat and faced him. I was tingling all through. I didn't care a rap what became of me for just that minute. I forgot about Tom. I prayed that the cop wouldn't come for a minute yet--but only that I might answer him. "You're mighty smart, ain't you? You can sit back here and sneer at me, can't you? And feel so big and smart and triumphant! What've you done but catch a girl at her first bungling job! It makes you feel awfully cocky, don't it? 'What a big man am I!' Bah!" I blew the smoke up toward the ceiling from my mouth, with just that satisfied gall that he had had; or rather, I pretended to. He let down the front legs of his chair and began to stare at me.