"How can I? Oh, you can make terms and conditions. You can stop and haggle over whether I'm worth raking out of the gutter or not. Well, I'm not. You may stake all you're worth on that. But if you cared twopence for me, you'd never stop to think whether I was or not; you'd just reach out a hand before you knew where you were, and haul me out. I know what love is, what even a woman's love can be. You don't----" "Ah! Don't I?----" "I'm not worth raking out. I know that fast enough. And I've only one chance to make it worth while from _your_ point of view, and that is to square Mosson somehow. De Konski thinks it just possible; he may get him to wait awhile on a heavy percentage and say nothing. My leave is up in two days, and in those two days I must somehow rake in the dollars--supposing the beast will wait, that is--and of course my infernal luck is bound to turn now. And when I get home I know a horse or two I stand to make a pot of money on. So you see I can't do the thing you ask anyhow. Ask me something easier, Agatha; there's nothing I won't do for you but that, which I absolutely can't." "But this is all I want," she said, shivering In the growing chill. "Promise this one thing, Ivor." "It's mocking at me to ask that. It can't be done. If Mosson sticks to his pound of flesh, as he jolly well will--there's only just the off-chance that he won't--it means I'm broken, have to send in my papers--you know what the chief is--sell up the last stick, raise something on expectations, and begin again with no chances and a heavy debt. The best would be to work out a passage to Canada or South Africa and try my luck there. Else--there is only the sea," he said, looking at the waves darkening under the great cloud sailing up from Bordighera with a cold blast before it, that drove sand and small pebbles into their faces and swept the promenade clear of people, donkeys, and mules in a minute, crashing eucalyptus-boughs together, twisting and twining tulip-tree and catalpa, and making the palm-tops writhe and rattle drily with a sound of pattering rain.