was a good girl at the bottom and
loved his son, and that I wouldn't want to ruin the boy when he had such
a big future ahead of him. I wouldn't have thought, to look at the man,
that he could have been so gentle. I made a fool of myself and cried,
and told him I'd go away and never see his son any more--that I'd always
been against marrying him. Well, he almost had tears in his eyes when he
thanked me and said I'd never regret it, and he pulled an envelope out of
his pocket. I said I wouldn't take any money, and gave it back to him.
I've always been sorry since that I didn't make him take it back--it
never did anything but harm to me. But he had his way. He laid it on
the table and said he wouldn't feel right, and took my hand--and I just
didn't care.

"Well, what do you think I did after he'd gone? I went and played a
piece on the piano,--and I never can bear to hear that ragtime to this
day. I couldn't seem to feel anything. And after a while I got up and
opened the envelope--it was full of crackly new hundred dollar bills
--thirty of 'em, and as I sat there staring at 'em the pain came on, like a
toothache, in throbs, getting worse all the time until I just couldn't
stand it. I had a notion of sending the money back even then, but I
didn't. I didn't know how to do it,--and as I told you, I wasn't able to
care much. Then I remembered I'd promised to go away, and I had to have
some money for that, and if I didn't leave right off I wouldn't have the
strength to do it. I hadn't even thought where to go: I couldn't think,
so I got dressed and went down to the depot anyway. It was one of those
bright, bitter cold winter days after a thaw when the icicles are hanging
everywhere. I went inside and walked up and down that long platform
under the glass roof. My, it was cold in there! I looked over all the
signs, and made up my mind I'd go to Chicago.

"I meant to work, I never meant to spend the money, but to send it back.
I'd put it aside--and then I'd go and take a little. Say, it was easy
not to work--and I didn't care what happened to me as long as I wasn't
going to see him again. Well, I'm not trying to smooth it over,
I suppose there was something crooked about me from the start, but I just
went clean to hell with that money, and when I heard he'd gone away,
I came back here."

"Something crooked!" The words rang in Hodder's ears, in his very soul.
How was he or any man to estimate, to unravel the justice from the
in