harf. Where were you going, then?"

"I don't know," said Carrie, after a pause.

Her face had clouded again. Her manner had changed a little also; it had
become colder, more reserved.

"Do you mean that--really? Or do you only mean that you don't mean to
tell me, that I have no business to ask?"

"I mean just what I said--that I didn't know."

"You are going to leave Mrs. Higgs and her friends, then?" asked Max, in
a tone between doubt and hope.

"Yes."

She made this answer rather by a motion of the head than by her voice.

"Well, I am very glad to hear it--very glad."

"Are you? I'm not. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful to lose one's home, any
sort of home."

"But could you call that a home? A hole like that? Among people like
this Mrs. Higgs and this Dick!"

"Oh, poor Dick! If they had all been like him it would not have
mattered."

"What! A pickpocket!" cried Max in disgust.

"What difference did that make? Do you suppose the wives and daughters
of the men in the city, financiers and the rest, love them the less
because they pass their lives trying to get the better of other people?
Isn't it just as dishonest to issue a false prospectus to get people to
put their money into worthless companies as to steal a watch? It's
nonsense to pretend it isn't."

Carrie spoke sharply. She had grown warm in defense of her felonious
friend.

Max thought a little before he answered.

"But you're not this man's wife or his daughter."

"Well, no. But he wanted to marry me; and if he hadn't been caught
yesterday, perhaps I should have let him."

"What?"

"Don't look so disgusted. He would have been kind to me."

"And _do_ you think you couldn't find a better husband than a--than
a pickpocket?"

"He would have been honest if I'd married him," said Carrie, quietly.

"He _says_ so, of course; but he wouldn't. A man says anything to
get the girl he's fond of to promise to marry him. Do you think it's
possible to change the habits of years, of all a man's life, perhaps,
like that?"

"I know it would have been possible," persisted she, obstinately. "I
know I could have worried him, and nagged at him, and worked for him,
till I made him do what I wanted."

And Max saw in her face, as she looked solemnly at the fire, that
dogged, steady resolution of the blue-eyed races.

"Well," said he crossly, "then I'm very glad he's been caught."

"Ah!" cried she, quickly, "you don't know what it will lead to, though.
He k