"I hated to see you have to go through that sordid business in the police station," he said, "hated to have you dragged through the court, to think you had to touch such things, even to know that they exist. I could not forgive myself! But what are you doing here alone at this hour of the night?" He broke off suddenly. The half stern, half protecting note made my heart beat. "I was at a ball," I stammered. "I came away suddenly because--because I couldn't bear it. I heard them talking behind the curtains. They said it was I who had convicted you." A touch came on my hand as if it had been the point of a finger, "Believe me, that is nonsense. It was I who convicted myself." I turned toward him. I would have given anything, in that moment, for a glimpse of his face. "If you did anything at all toward that end," he went on steadily, "remember you only helped me toward what I really wanted to do." I kept my eyes fixed on that space of darkness from which his voice came. "If you wanted to convict yourself then why did you try to escape?" There was quite an interval while I waited, trembling on the brink of the mystery. When at last he spoke his voice sounded a note of reserve. The unconscious intimateness was gone. "Whatever my motive in convicting myself has been, let me assure you it has put me so far away from you that I am hardly worthy even to speak to you. But I feared you had been troubled about giving your evidence, and I am glad of this one chance to tell you that you have helped rather than hurt me. But now it is all over; you will not have to worry or think about it any more, for what I am going to do now will put me quite out of your sight." He said it with such a sad, reckless gaiety, and it sounded so final that it seemed to me the world had come to an end with it; and, without any understanding of how or why it happened, I found myself crying, with my face in my hands. My ears were filled with the sound of my own sobs, but through them I could hear him begging me to stop, and, though he did not touch me, I could feel him now close beside me on the same seat and bending above me. "The thing isn't worth it," I heard him say, "I deserve it all--everything! You are too good to waste any pity on me! But I love you for it. I have loved you since the moment I saw you staring at me as if I were the devil. I loved you when you came to the prison and pointed me out for what I was, the man with the pistol. I will never forget you." At that I cried all the harder, but now there was a curious feeling of comfort in it. All the misery I had kept shut up in my thoughts for so many weeks seemed to be running out with my tears. "What can I do to make you feel differently about it?" He was pleading. "Don't do what you are going to do," I whispered, muffled up in my handkerchief.