e and if she doesn't I will! Come now, Judge, you
will help me, won't you?"

A cynical smile wreathed itself around the mouth of the old roue. In his
debauched nature, the oil of sympathy had long ago been exhausted. This
was a last despairing flicker. A wick cannot burn alone.

"Help you?" he said languidly. "Oh, yes, I will help you. There is no
use trying to save you. You are only another moth! You want the fire,
and you will have it! You will burn your wings off as millions have done
before you and as millions will do after you. What then? Wings are made
to be burned! I burned mine. Probably if I had another pair I would burn
them also. It is as useless to moralize to a lover as to a tiger. I am a
fool to waste my breath on you. Let us get down to business. You say
that she loves you, and that she will be glad to learn that she is
free?"

"I do! her heart is on our side. She will believe you, easily!"

"Yes, she will believe me easily! She will believe me too easily! For
six thousand years desire has been a synonym for credulity. All men
believe what they want to, except myself. I believe everything that I do
not want to, and nothing that I do! But no matter. How much am I to get
for this job?"

They haggled a while over the price, struck a bargain and shook
hands--the same symbol being used among men to seal a compact of love or
hate, virtue or vice.

"Be at the Spencer House at eleven o'clock," said David, rising. "You
will find us on the balcony. The doctor is to spend the night in a revel
with the captain of the Mary Ann, and we shall be uninterrupted. Be an
actor. Be a great actor, Judge. You are to deal with a soul which
possesses unusual powers of penetration."

"Do not fear! She will be no match for me, for she is innocent--and when
was virtue ever a match for vice? She is predestined to her doom!
Farewell! Fare-ill, I mean," he muttered under his breath, as David
passed from the room.

He gazed after him with his basilisk eyes, drank another glass of whisky
and relapsed into reveries.

The mind of the lover was full of tumultuous emotions. On the thin ice
of his momentary joy, he hovered like an inexperienced skater over the
great deeps of sin which were waiting to engulf him.

There was still an hour before the time when he would have to take his
part in the business of the evening. He determined to walk off his
excitement, and chose the way along the edge of the river.

It was now quite dark