It was quite dark. Kennaston could not see the woman with whom he was talking. But they were in an open paved place, like a courtyard, and he was facing the great shut door against which she stood, vaguely discernible. He knew they were waiting for some one to open this door. It seemed to him, for no reason at all, that they were at Tunbridge Wells. But there was no light anywhere. Complete darkness submerged them; the skies showed not one glimmer overhead. “That I am of smirched repute, madam, I lack both grounds and inclination to deny. Yet I am not so through choice. Believe me, I am innately of wellnigh ducal disposition; and by preference, an ill name is as obnoxious to me as—shall we say?—soiled linen or a coat of last year’s cut. But then, _que voulez-vous?_ as our lively neighbors observe. Squeamishness was never yet bred in an empty pocket; and I am thus compelled to the commission of divers profitable peccadilloes, once in a blue moon, by the dictates of that same haphazard chance which to-night has pressed me into the service of innocence and virtue.” She kept silence; and he went on in lightheaded wonder as to what this dream, so plainly recognized as such, was all about, and as to whence came the words which sprang so nimbly to his lips, and as to what was the cause of his great wistful sorrow. Perhaps if he listened very attentively to what he was saying, he might find out. “You do not answer, madam. Yet think a little. I am a notorious rogue: the circumstance is conceded. But do you think I have selfishly become so in quest of amusement? Nay, I can assure you that Newgate, the wigged judge, the jolting cart, the gallows, is no pleasant dream o’ nights. But what choice had I? Cast forth to the gutter’s miring in the susceptible years of infancy, a girl of the town’s byblow, what choice had I, in heaven’s name? If I may not live as I would, I must live as I may; in emperors and parsons and sewer-diggers and cheese-mites that claim is equally allowed.” “You are a thief?” she asked, pensively. “Let us put it, rather, that I have proved in life’s hard school an indifferent Latinist, by occasionally confounding _meum_ with _tuum_.” “A murderer?” “Something of the sort might be my description in puritanic mouths. You know at least what happened at The Cat and Hautbois.” (“_But what in the world had happened there?_” Kennaston wondered.) “And yet—” The sweet voice marveled. “And yet I have saved you from Lord Umfraville? Ah, madam, Providence labors with quaint instruments, dilapidating Troy by means of a wood rocking-horse, and loosing sin into the universe through a half-eaten apple. Nay, I repeat, I am not all base; and I have read somewhere that those who are in honor wholly shipwrecked will yet very often cling desperately to one stray spar of virtue.” He could tell her hand had raised to the knocker on the closed door. “Mr. Vanringham, will you answer me a question?” “A thousand. (_So I am Vanringham._”)