don't think I'd ever told a lie. I had a good mother, just as Christine has. But what the devil am I doing--talking like this!" The eager, rather appealing note went out of his voice; he almost snarled the bitter sentence. "I didn't come to explain, or to beg, or to excuse myself. I won't keep you any longer. Remember, I'm not asking anything of you, Mary,--not a thing. I'm not that low." He was out of breath. No doubt, it was the longest speech he had made in years. Perhaps his own voice sounded strange to him. "You are not to leave this house, Tom, until you have promised," she said firmly. All the time he was speaking, she had stood like a statue before him, never taking her eyes from his distorted face. "Oh, I'm not, eh? We'll see!" "What are you going to do to Colonel Grand?" "I'm going to--" he checked himself. "I'm going to beat him to a jelly!" "You mean, you are going to murder him?" She shuddered as she said it. "No," he said, with grim humor; "I'm only going to help him to die. You see, Mary, Bob Grand committed suicide the day he sent me up. The final death struggle has been a long time coming, but it's almost here. He took a very slow, but a sure poison." The time had come for the strong appeal. She laid her hands on his shoulders. "Tom, have you thought of what it will mean, not to me, but to Christine?" "She knows, by this time, that I'm an ex-convict. It won't hurt her to know I'm even worse." "She does not believe you were guilty. She always has said you could have been a good man if you had let whiskey alone. You see, Tom, she understood--she understands. Isn't it worth your while to think of her? You are not drinking now. Can't you think of something good--something kind to do? Must you go to your grave--and such a grave!--knowing that you never did a really big thing for her in all your life? Have you no desire to make her think of you as something except the unnatural beast you were when she knew you best of all? I see the change in you. Don't you want her to see it? What do you gain by killing Colonel Grand? He has wronged you, but do you help yourself by making matters infinitely worse now, so many years afterward? Do--" "He told me, over there in the police station, three years ago, that he had won your love, that you lived for him alone. He lied. I could kill him once for that lie. He told me, in the next breath, that you and he were going to sell Christine to a certain French nobleman, who already had a wife and family. He lied again. I could kill him once more for that lie. He told me--" "Don't! Don't! For God's sake, don't tell me any more," she groaned, horror-stricken. He went on. "He taunted me, he laughed at me. I was up there for three years. In all that time his damned sneers and laughter were never out of my mind. He laughed at me because the drunken bargain I had made with him had turned out to his credit, after all." "The sale?" "Yes."