He shook off her hands. "Don't come any of that, Mary. It won't do any good. He made me what I was, he would have prostituted you. I was just bad enough to fall, you were too good to even stumble. Then he landed me in the pen. Maybe you won't believe it, Mary, but I'd stopped drinking and was earning fair wages--well, I was tending bar in Chicago. Barkeepers _have_ to be sober men, you see. I had not touched a drop for nearly three months. The temptation was too strong there, so I got out of it. Then I looked up Barnum to get a job as ringmaster. I was going under the name of Bradford. Somehow nobody would trust me. They knew me. Joey Noakes came through the West with a pantomime show about that time. He told me you were in Europe. First thing I'd heard of you, that was, Mary. Then he told me you'd got your money out of Grand, legitimately, he swore. I didn't believe him. I thought there had been some shinanigan. I stood it as long as I could, and then I broke for New York. You see, girlie--I mean Mary, I'd done for you in a nasty way. I practically handed you to him. You--well, we won't go into that." "No," she said, very pale, "we must not go into that, Tom. You sold me with the show. I--I can never forgive you for that." "I'm not asking forgiveness, am I?" he cried harshly. "I'm just tellin' you, that's all. Well, I came down here to kill him three years ago. I knew you hated him. If you gave in it wasn't because you wanted to, but because I'd fixed it so's you couldn't very well get out of it. There was only one way for you to be rid of Bob Grand after that--and only one man to do it for you. So I came down here to do it. Ernie Cronk ran across me on the street one night. He began filling me up with stories of how Grand had also tried to hurt Christine, and all about how you were living like a princess abroad. I waited until Grand came back from England, a couple of weeks later. Ernie had got me clear off my head by that time, nagging me day and night. He tried to get me to drink, but I was too wise for that. Well, I found Bob Grand and, like a fool, started in to tell him what I was going to do to him instead of doing it first. All of a sudden he pulled a gun. I had no chance, so I bolted. He fired twice and yelled for the police. They--they caught me in an alley--and I had a gun in my clothes, too. The next morning he came to see me in the station-house--to identify me, he said. Then he told me he was going to send me up for highway robbery--but he was willing, for your sake and Christine's, to say nothing about the past--or anything. He did swear me into the pen, and I kept my mouth closed. But, Mary, I am not a thief at heart, I never was one. Whatever I did that was crooked in the old days was due to whiskey. It's a habit men have, I know, blaming everything on to whiskey, but--but, oh, say, Mary, you _know_ I wasn't that sort of a man when I married you. I was straight, wasn't I? I never had done a crooked thing in my life. I