"Don't talk any more, Bannerman," Maitland tried to soothe him. "You'll pull through this all right, and--You need never have gone to such lengths. If you'd come to me--"' The ghost of a sardonic smile flitted, incongruously, across the dying man's waxen, cherubic features. "Oh, hell," he said; "you wouldn't understand. Perhaps you weren't born with the right crook in your nature,--or the wrong one. Perhaps it's because you can't see the fun in playing the game. It's that that counts." He compressed his lips, and after a moment spoke again. "You never did have the true sportsman's love of the game for its own sake. You're like most of the rest of the crowd--content with mighty cheap virtue, Dan.... I don't know that I'd choose just this kind of a wind-up, but it's been fun while it lasted. Good-by, old man." He did not speak again, but lay with closed eyes. Five minutes later Maitland rose and unclasped the cold fingers from about his own. With a heavy sigh he turned away. At the door Hickey was awaiting him. "Yer lady," he said, as soon as they had drawn apart from the crowd, "is waitin' for yeh in the cab down-stairs. She was gettin' a bit highsteerical 'nd I thought I'd better get her away.... Oh, she's waitin' all right!" he added, alarmed by Maitland's expression. But Maitland had left him abruptly; and now, as he ran down flight after echoing flight of marble stairs, there rested cold fear in his heart. In the room he had just quitted, a man whom he had called friend and looked upon with affectionate regard, had died a self-confessed and unrepentant liar and thief. If now he were to find the girl another time vanished,--if this had been but a ruse of hers finally to elude him,--if all men were without honor, all women faithless,--if he had indeed placed the love of his life, the only love that he had ever known, unworthily,--if she cared so little who had seemed to care much.... XVII CONFESSIONAL I But the cab was there; and within it the girl was waiting for him. The driver, after taking up his fare, had at her direction drawn over to the further curb, out of the fringe of the rabble which besieged the St. Luke Building in constantly growing numbers, and through which Maitland, too impatient to think of leaving by the basement exit, had elbowed and fought his way in an agony of apprehension that brooked no hindrance, heeded no difficulty. He dashed round the corner, stopped short with a sinking heart, then as the cabby's signaling whip across the street caught his eye, fairly hurled himself to the other curb, pausing at the wheel, breathless, lifted out of himself with joy to find her faithful in this ultimate instance.