"I don't care whether Patten is a physician or not," she ran on. "He is a bungler. It is a sheer wonder he did not let you die. You told me yourself that he attributed the second wound to your fall and that you knew that Moraga had struck you a terrible blow with his gun-barrel. Patten did not treat that wound; he cared for the lesser injury like a fool and allowed the major one to take care of itself. And the result . . . Oh, dear God! Think of what might have happened. If any one but me had learned what I have learned to-night." He rose with her, stood still, regarding her with eyes like drills. Then he shook his head. "You are wrong, Virginia, dead wrong," he told her with quiet emphasis. "You have called me a thief? Well, perhaps I am. You have given your explanation; let me give mine." He paused, shaping the matter in mind. His face was stern and very, very grave. Presently, his lowered voice guarded against any chance ears, he continued. "I lay on my bed a week, a long, utterly damnable week. I could do nothing but think. So I thought, as I told you, of everything. Most of all I thought of you, Virginia Page. Shall I tell you why? No; we'll let that go until we understand each other. I thought of myself, of my life, of my eternal striving with Jim Galloway. Some day I should get Galloway or he would get me. In either case, what good? Was not Galloway a wiser man than I? He took what he wanted; I merely wasted my time chasing after such bigger men as he. If he desired a thousand dollars or five, ten thousand, he went out for it like a man and took it. Why shouldn't he? Oh, I tell you I had the time to dwell upon the little meaningless words of honesty and dishonesty, honor and dishonor, and all of their progeny and forebears! They are empty; empty, I tell you, Virginia! When I stood on my feet again I was a free man. I knew it then, I know it now. Free, I tell you. Free, most of all from shackles of empty ideas. What I wanted I would take." She looked at him helplessly, his dominant vigor for the moment seeming a thing not to be restricted or tamed. "What you have done," she told him gently, "is to find argument to bolster up impulse. That is generally very easy to do, isn't it? If one wants a thing, it is not hard convincing himself that it is right that he should have it." "At least I have decided sanely what I wanted, there is no call for hospitals." "You sustained a fracture of the skull. That fracture had improper treatment. It is a wonder you did not die. The wound healed and there remains a pressure of a bit of bone upon the brain. Until that pressure is removed by an operation you are doomed to be a criminal. A kleptomaniac," she said steadily, "if not much worse." "I believe that you mean what you say. You are just mistaken, that is all. I'd know if there were anything physically wrong." She came closer, laid her hand upon his arm, and lifted her eyes pleadingly to his.