a finger,
"Believe me, that is nonsense. It was I who convicted myself."

I turned toward him. I would have given anything, in that moment, for
a glimpse of his face.

"If you did anything at all toward that end," he went on steadily,
"remember you only helped me toward what I really wanted to do."

I kept my eyes fixed on that space of darkness from which his voice
came. "If you wanted to convict yourself then why did you try to
escape?"

There was quite an interval while I waited, trembling on the brink of
the mystery. When at last he spoke his voice sounded a note of
reserve. The unconscious intimateness was gone.

"Whatever my motive in convicting myself has been, let me assure you it
has put me so far away from you that I am hardly worthy even to speak
to you. But I feared you had been troubled about giving your evidence,
and I am glad of this one chance to tell you that you have helped
rather than hurt me. But now it is all over; you will not have to
worry or think about it any more, for what I am going to do now will
put me quite out of your sight."

He said it with such a sad, reckless gaiety, and it sounded so final
that it seemed to me the world had come to an end with it; and, without
any understanding of how or why it happened, I found myself crying,
with my face in my hands. My ears were filled with the sound of my own
sobs, but through them I could hear him begging me to stop, and, though
he did not touch me, I could feel him now close beside me on the same
seat and bending above me.

"The thing isn't worth it," I heard him say, "I deserve it
all--everything! You are too good to waste any pity on me! But I love
you for it. I have loved you since the moment I saw you staring at me
as if I were the devil. I loved you when you came to the prison and
pointed me out for what I was, the man with the pistol. I will never
forget you."

At that I cried all the harder, but now there was a curious feeling of
comfort in it. All the misery I had kept shut up in my thoughts for so
many weeks seemed to be running out with my tears.

"What can I do to make you feel differently about it?" He was pleading.

"Don't do what you are going to do," I whispered, muffled up in my
handkerchief.

He made a queer little sound in his throat--amusement or despair, I
couldn't tell which. "Don't you know I can't stay here? Whether I
shot the man or not I am forfeit. I have to go. But before I do I
want t