"Not altogether, Lady Vera." They were an honest couple. "It put me on my mettle; it gave me something to prevent. At first--as I'm afraid you knew--I really didn't want to touch the fellow with a pole. He was an obvious incurable; he would have been better hanged--justly or unjustly." "Don't speak of that--or do!" exclaimed the girl. "It makes me forgive him everything!" "Well, my first idea was about right. He was beyond reclaim. But I never thought he would give me a definite move to block; that, as you know; is one's chief job after all, and it put a new complexion on the case. It was as though--as though one took a man on for cancer and found him plotting to shoot the Chancellor of the Exchequer before he died! I apologize for the analogy, Lady Vera," said Dollar, making the most of their laugh, "but the man became a new proposition on the spot. And the funny thing is that I believe I almost might have cured him after all--done him some good, anyhow--but for the very thing that bucked me up!" Lady Vera looked out at a flying brake of naked trees, the color of cigar-ash. He had lost her attention for the moment. "I was a little fool," she said at length. "I should have listened to you, and been content to help in some other way. I am sorry." "I'm not!" replied Doctor Dollar. "It was a very sporting folly--but everything you ever did was that!" She shook her head sadly, as a brown river, girt with olives, flashed under the train like a child's skipping-rope. "I haven't changed my opinions," she said, just a trifle aggressively. "But I would give my life to undo many of my actions--not only that one--many, many!" and she looked him bravely and humbly in the eyes. "So the whole thing has served me right, and will if it happens all over again." "If what does?" "This blackmailing of me by that poor man!" "It won't. I've frightened him." "He will think of some subtler way." "There's no subtlety in him, no power, no initiative, no anything but mere brute force," said Dollar, with a touch of that same strength and weakness in his unusually emphatic assertion. "The fellow is a deadly tool and nothing more. He knuckled under to me in a moment." Lady Vera shook her head again, but this time she was looking firmly in his face. "I feel," she said, with a stoical conviction, "that I shall be fair game to him as long as we are both in the world. And it's what I deserve." Dollar abandoned his attempt at disingenuous disabuse; the extreme to which he flew instead was a little startling, but these two knew each other. "You must marry, Lady Vera," he was moved to say. But his manner was eminently uninspired. He might have been telling her she must hand her keys to the hotel porter at Rome. That was in fact the note he meant to take, only he sang it louder than he knew. "I can never marry," she answered calmly. "I have blood upon my hands." "You can marry a man who knows!"