“No!” he cried out again. “It shall never be! Claire, you cannot mean what you are saying! A promise like that! It was forced upon you inhumanly, horribly. He would have murdered me.” “But to-night you are alive,” she answered quietly. “Alive! Yes!” he said fiercely. “I am alive, and----” “It is because you are alive that I promised,” she broke in gently. “He kept his word. I cannot break mine.” “Alive!” John Bruce laughed now in sudden, bitter agony. “Alive--yes! And do you think that I can walk about the streets, and talk, and smile, and suck the honey out of life, while you have paid for it with a tortured soul? Claire, you shall not! That man is---- No, wait! There is myself. He called me a snivelling hypocrite. You shall know the worst of me before you know the worst of him. There is not much to tell--because he has told you. I am a gambler. All my life I've gambled. As far back as I can remember I've been a rolling stone. My life has been useless, utterly worthless. But I was never ashamed of it; I never saw any reason to be ashamed until you came into my life. It hasn't been the same since then '--and it will never be the same again. You have given me something to live for now, Claire.” She shook her head. “You do not argue well,” she said softly. “If I have brought this to you, John, I am so glad--so glad for this, too. Oh, I cannot tell you how glad I am, for, because I loved you, the knowledge of what your life was hurt me. But I had faith in you, John, as I always shall have. So don't you see”--the brave little smile came again--“that this is a reward, something tangible and great, to make still more worth while the promise that I made?” He stared at her. He swept his hand across his eyes. She seemed--she seemed to be slipping away from him--beyond--beyond his reach. “That man!” he said desperately. “You said you knew him--but you do not know him. He is the head and front and brains of a gang of crooks. I know! He held me a prisoner in their dirty lair, a hidden place, a cellar over in the slums--like rats they were. He is a criminal, and a dangerous one--while he masquerades with his medicine. God alone knows the crimes, if there are any, that he has not committed. He is a foul, unclean and filthy thing, debauched and dissolute, a moral leper. Claire, do you understand all this--that his life is pollution and defilement, that love to him is lust, that your innocence----” With a broken, piteous cry, Claire stopped him. And again he stared at her. She did not speak, but in her eyes he read the torment of a far greater and fuller appreciation of the price than he, he knew, though it turned his soul sick within him, could ever have. And suddenly he covered his face with his hands. “Bought!” he said brokenly in his agony. “Oh, my God, this has bought me!” He felt his hands drawn away, and her two palms laid upon his cheeks. He looked at her. How white she was!