“When a man has the power of a Sultan in Turkey, and uses it with the ideas of a spinster in Tooting, I often wonder that nobody puts a knife in him. I wish there were more sympathy for murderers, somehow. I’m very sorry the poor old fellow’s gone myself; but you gentlemen always seem to forget there are any other people in the world. He’s all right; he was a good fellow, and his soul, I fancy, has gone to the happiest paradise of all.” The anxious American could read nothing of the effect of this in the dark Napoleonic face of the lawyer, who merely said: “What do you mean?” “The fool’s paradise,” said Treherne, and drained his pot of cider. The lawyer rose. He did not look at Treherne, or speak to him; but looked and spoke straight across him to the American, who found the utterance not a little unexpected. “Mr. Paynter,” said Ashe, “you thought it rather morbid of me to collect murderers; but it’s fortunate for your own view of the case that I do. It may surprise you to know that Mr. Treherne has now, in my eyes, entirely cleared himself of suspicion. I have been intimate with several assassins, as I remarked; but there’s one thing none of them ever did. I never knew a murderer to talk about the murder, and then at once deny it and defend it. No, if a man is concealing his crime, why should he go out of his way to apologize for it?” “Well,” said Paynter, with his ready appreciation, “I always said you were a remarkable man; and that’s certainly a remarkable idea.” “Do I understand,” asked the poet, kicking his heels on the cobbles, “that both you gentlemen have been kindly directing me toward the gallows?” “No,” said Paynter thoughtfully. “I never thought you guilty; and even supposing I had, if you understand me, I should never have thought it quite so guilty to be guilty. It would not have been for money or any mean thing, but for something a little wilder and worthier of a man of genius. After all, I suppose, the poet has passions like great unearthly appetites; and the world has always judged more gently of his sins. But now that Mr. Ashe admits your innocence, I can honestly say I have always affirmed it.”