How do I know? How do you know? Perhaps it was grief, perhaps it was hysteria, perhaps it was according to the light God gave her and she couldn’t understand, perhaps it was only wild, unreasoning, frantic passion. I don’t know. I only know she called him--a _murderer_. She couldn’t have loved him, you say. Perhaps no, perhaps yes. Does it make any difference? Breen thought she did, and Breen loved _her_. I don’t know. I only know that where he looked for a ray of mercy, _her_ mercy, to light the blackened depths, for the touch, _her_ touch, that would have held him back from the brink, for the word of comfort, _her_ word, that would have bid him stand like a gallant soldier facing untold odds, he received, instead, a condemnation more terrible than any that had gone before, and a bleeding heart dried bitter as gall, a patient, grief-stricken man became a vicious snapping wolf, and “Angel” Breen--a devil. Would I have been a stronger man than Breen? Would you? Would I have done differently than Kitty Mooney did if I had been in her place? Would you? We don’t know, do we? No one knows. God keep us from ever knowing. The poor devil in the gutters, the wretched, ruined lives of women who have lost their grip and drunk the dregs, the human, stranded, battered wrecks we see around us, were once like you and me. We don’t know, do we? God pity them! God keep us from the sneer! Our strength has never been measured. It may be no greater than theirs. To-morrow it may be you or I. It was pretty lawless out here in those days. We had the riff-raff of the East, and worse; and there was nothing to restrain them, nothing much to keep them in check, and they did about as they liked. They brought the touch into the picture of the West that the West hasn’t lived down yet, and I’m not sure ever will. The brawling, gambling, gun-handling type, the thief, the desperado, the bad man, rotten bad, bad to the core. They’ve been stamped out now most of them, but it was different then. _They_ didn’t turn a cold shoulder to Breen. Why should they? They were outcasts and pariahs, too, weren’t they? And Breen, well, I guess you understand as well as I do, and you know as I know that when a man like that goes he goes the limit. There’s no middle course for some men, they’re not made that way.