"I don't know, Mercedes, I don't know," said Mrs. Talcott in a voice of profound sadness. "I don't know who deserves penalties and who don't, if you begin to argue it out to yourself." Mrs. Talcott, who had seated herself at the other side of the table, laid an arm upon it, looking before her and not at Mercedes, as she spoke. "You're a bad woman; that ain't to be denied. You're a bad, dangerous woman, and perhaps what you've been trying to do now is the worst thing you've ever done. But I guess I'm way past feeling angry at anything you do. I guess I'm way past wanting you to get come up with. I can't make out how to think about a person like you. Maybe you figured it all out to yourself different from the way it looks. Maybe you persuaded yourself to believe that Karen would be better off apart from her husband. I guess that's the way with most criminals, don't you? They figure things out different from the way other people do. I expect you can't help it. I expect you were born so. And I guess you can't change. Some bad folks seem to manage to get religion and that brings 'em round; but I expect you ain't that kind." Madame von Marwitz, while Mrs. Talcott thus shared her psychological musings with her, was not looking at the old woman: her eyes were fixed on the floor and she seemed to consider. "No," she said presently. "I am not that kind." She raised her eyes and they met Mrs. Talcott's. "What are you going to do now?" she asked. "Well," said Mrs. Talcott, drawing a long sigh of fatigue, "I've been thinking that over and I guess I'll stay over here. There ain't any place for me in America now; all my folks are dead. You know that money my Uncle Adam left me a long time ago that I bought the annuity with. Well, I've saved most of that annuity; I'd always intended that Karen should have what I'd saved when I died. But Karen don't need it now. It'll buy me a nice little cottage somewhere and I can settle down and have a garden and chickens and live on what I've got." "How much was it, the annuity?" Madame von Marwitz asked after a moment. "A hundred and ten pounds a year," said Mrs. Talcott. "But you cannot live on that," Madame von Marwitz, after another moment, said. "Why, gracious sakes, of course I can, Mercedes," Mrs. Talcott replied, smiling dimly. Again there was silence and then Madame von Marwitz said, in a voice a little forced: "You have not got much out of life, have you, Tallie?" "Well, no; I don't expect you would say as I had," Mrs. Talcott acquiesced, showing a slight surprise. "You haven't even got me--now--have you," Madame von Marwitz went on, looking down at her door-knob and running her hand slowly round it while she spoke. "Not even the criminal. But that is a gain, you feel, no doubt, rather than a loss." "No, Mercedes," said Mrs. Talcott mildly; "I don't feel that way. I feel it's a loss, I guess. You see you're all the family I've got left."