“No, hang it, Fair,” answered Travers, coming back from the door and confronting Fair, “you know that I will not leave you; but why must you ask Allyne and me to learn all this—when we could otherwise swear to the fact of your being what we have always known you to be—yes, know you to be now—for, by gad, you can’t get me to believe you.” “Hang the swearing,” said Allyne, trying to laugh. “If they get me on the witness stand, I’ll let them know what I think of greasy foreigners, and my views as to sending them where they belong. Go on, Fair, and tell us what they did next.” “Then sit down, Travers, and hear me out,” replied Fair, filling the three glasses and regaining an air of quiet. “Blaze away,” answered Travers, dropping into a chair with resignation. “At the bottom of a hole one can’t fall lower—so go on.” “Have a drink, both of you, and we’ll get on,” said Fair, and all three sipped their drink in silence for some minutes. Then Fair said: “Many years ago the noble woman whom you know as Mrs. Fair was married to the wretched man whom I killed yesterday. She afterward discovered that he had a living wife, and she, of course, therefore, found herself a nameless outcast. She appealed to me, and for two reasons I offered her the protection of my name. I had loved her some years before, and I inherited from my fathers a sort of morbid craving to sacrifice my life to a cause or purpose which the reason and the prudence of all normally minded men would discountenance.” “Surely wedding such a glorious woman as Mrs. Fair was scarcely what one could look at as a sacrifice of one’s life,” protested Travers when Fair paused for a moment.