“Look here! Do you know him?” “Tell me first what I asked you. Aren’t you sorry for him still?” “I dare say I am. I don’t know.” “What did you—what did you—think of him at the time?” “I thought he was—terrible.” “Terrible—in what way?” “I don’t know that I can tell you in what way. It was so awful to think that a man who had had some advantages should have sunk to that. If he’d been a real burglar—I mean a professional criminal—I should have been afraid of him; but I shouldn’t have had that sensation of something meant for better things that had been debased.” “Didn’t he tell you he was hungry?” The smile came back—faintly. “You seem to know all about it, don’t you? It’s the strangest thing I ever knew. No one in this world could have told you but himself. Yes, he did say he was hungry; but then, a man who’d been what he must have been shouldn’t have got into that condition. He’d stolen into our pantry, poor creature, and drunk the cooking-wine. He told me that—” Without rising, her figure became alert with a new impulse. “Oh, I see! You do know him. He was an Englishman. I remember that.” I placed myself fully before her. “No, he wasn’t an Englishman.” “He spoke like one.” “So do I, for the matter of that.” “Then he was a Canadian. Was he?” “He was a Canadian.” “Oh, then that accounts for it. But you did puzzle me at first. But how did you come to meet him? Was it at that Down and Out Club that papa and Mr. Christian are so interested in? You go to it, too, don’t you? I think Stephen Cantyre said you did.” “Yes, I go to it, too.” She grew pensive, resting her chin on a hand, with her elbow on the arm of the chair. “I suppose it’s all right; but I never can understand how men can be so merciful to one other’s vices. It looks as if they recognized the seed of them within themselves.” “Probably that’s the reason.” “Women don’t feel like that about one another.” “They haven’t the same cause.” “I hope he’s doing better—that man—and picking up again.” “He is.” She asked, in quite another tone, “You’re not going back to New York to-morrow, are you?” “I’m not sure—yet.” “Hilda said she was going to try to persuade you and the Grahams to stay till Tuesday. If you can stay, mamma and I were planning—” I put myself directly in front of her, no more than a few feet away, my hands in the pockets of my jacket. “Look at me again. Look at me well. Try to recall—” Slowly, very slowly, she struggled to her feet. The color went out of her lips and the light from her eyes as she backed away from me in a kind of terror. “What—what—are you trying to make me—to make me understand?” “Think! How should I know all that I’ve been saying if—” “If the man himself didn’t tell you. But he did.” “No, he didn’t. No one had to tell me.” She reached the veranda rail, which she clutched with one hand, while the other, clenched, was pressed against her breast. “You don’t mean—” “Yes, I do mean—” “Oh, you can’t?” “Why can’t I.”