“So have I,” said Senhouse, “and in Siberia at that. I was there for more than a year, though not all that time within walls. They let me loose when they found that I could be trusted, and I learned botany, and caught a marsh fever which nearly finished me. They wouldn't have me in after that, being quite content that I should rot in the open. I was succoured by a woman, one of those noble creatures who are made to give themselves. She gave me what blood she had left. God bless her: she blessed me.” “It was a woman,” said the stranger, “that sent me to prison.” Senhouse, after looking him over, calmly replied, “I don't believe you. You mean, I think, that there was a woman, and you went to prison. You confuse her and your feelings about her. It is natural, but not very fine-mannered. No woman would have put the thing as you have put it to me.” The stranger shifted two or three times under his host's quiet regard: presently he said, “This is the tale in a nutshell. She was beautiful and kind to me; she was in a hateful place, and I loved her--and she knew it. There was a man with claims--rights he had none--preposterous claims, made infamous by his acts. The position was impossible, intolerable. She knew it, but did nothing. Women are like that--endlessly enduring; but men are not. I dragged him off a horse and thrashed him. He had me to gaol, and she went her ways, leaving a note for me, hoping I should do well. Do well! Much she cares what I do. Much care I.” He ended with a sob which was like the cough of a wolf at night, and then turned his face away. “Why should she care,” asked Senhouse, “what becomes of you? By your act you dropped yourself out of her sphere. If she was to be degraded, as you call it, by whom was she degraded? But you talk there a language which I don't understand. You say that she was beautiful, and I suppose you know what you mean by the word. How then is a beautiful person to be degraded by anything the likes of you, or your fellow-dog, do to her? The thing's absurd. You can't claw her soul or blacken the edges of that. You can't sell that into prostitution or worse. That is her own, and it's that which makes her beautiful,--in spite of the precious pair of you, bickering and mauling each other to possess her. Possess her, poor fool! Can you possess moonlight? If you have degraded anything, you have degraded yourself. She remains where she is, entirely out of your reach.” The young man now turned his trapped and wretched face to the speaker. “You little know--” he began, then for weakness stopped. “I can't quarrel with you; wait till I've had a night's rest.” “You shall have it, and welcome,” said Senhouse. “But you'll never quarrel with me. I believe I've got beyond that way of enforcing arguments which I fear may be unsound. I doubt if I have quarrelled with anybody for twenty years.”