ld Mrs. Tweed
talked a lot and then, after a time, I said something--about my
grandmother. And then she told me that someone who lived here did
secretarial work for my aunt----"

He stopped abruptly.

"Well?" said Lizzie, laughing. "All this is not very terrible."

"Then, you see, I determined to stay. I was full of absurd ideas just
at the time, thought that I was going to take some great revenge--I was
quite melodramatic. And so I thought that I'd use you, get to know you
and then, through you--do something or another."

Lizzie eyed him with merriment. "Upon my word, what were you going to
make me do? Carry bombs into your aunt's bedroom or set fire to the
Portland Place house? Tell me, I should like to know----"

"Ah," he said, "it's all very well for you to laugh. It's very kind of
you to take it that way, but lots of women wouldn't have liked it.
They'd have thought it another of the things I'm always accused of
doing, I suppose."

"_No_," said Lizzie gravely, "it was all perfectly natural. I
understand. I should have done just the same kind of thing, I expect, if
I'd been in your place."

The fierceness of his voice showed her that he had been brooding for
weeks, and that life was, just now, harder than he could endure.

"You can trust me a great deal farther than that, Mr. Breton," she said.

"The other night," he began, "you said that I might talk to you. I've
been pretty lonely lately--and it would help me if----"

"Anything you like," she assured him.

"Besides, there's more than that," he went on. "You've heard--of course
you must have heard all kinds of things against me. You're in the
enemy's camp and I don't suppose they measure their words. I don't know
why you've been so decent to me as you have after what you must have
heard----"

"Don't worry your head about that," she said. "We all have our enemies."

"No, but now that we're friends I'd like you to know my side of it all.
I don't want to make myself out a hero or blacken all the other people,
but there _is_ something to be said for me--there _is_--there _is_----"

He muttered these last words with the deepest intensity. He seemed to
fling them through the window into the square, as though he were
standing out there, on his defence, before all those listening lighted
windows.

"I've been a fool--a thousand times. I've done silly things often and
once or twice bad, rotten things, but all these others--these virtuous
people who are so