se,
now, and let's get out of this."

Her assertion was disregarded as to the inability to change.

"You can change," Dick went on impetuously. "Mary, haven't you ever
wanted the things that other women have, shelter, and care, and the big
things of life, the things worth while? They're all ready for you, now,
Mary.... And what about me?" Reproach leaped in his tone. "After all,
you've married me. Now it's up to you to give me my chance to make good.
I've never amounted to much. I've never tried much. I shall, now, if you
will have it so, Mary; if you'll help me. I will come out all right, I
know that--so do you, Mary. Only, you must help me."

"I help you!" The exclamation came from the girl in a note of
incredulous astonishment.

"Yes," Dick said, simply. "I need you, and you need me. Come away with
me."

"No, no!" was the broken refusal. There was a great grief clutching at
the soul of this woman who had brought vengeance to its full flower.
She was gasping. "No, no! I married you, not because I loved you, but to
repay your father the wrong he had done me. I wouldn't let myself even
think of you, and then--I realized that I had spoiled your life."

"No, not spoiled it, Mary! Blessed it! We must prove that yet."

"Yes, spoiled it," the wife went on passionately. "If I had understood,
if I could have dreamed that I could ever care---- Oh, Dick, I would
never have married you for anything in the world."

"But now you do realize," the young man said quietly. "The thing is
done. If we made a mistake, it is for us to bring happiness out of that
error."

"Oh, can't you see?" came the stricken lament. "I'm a jail-bird!"

"But you love me--you do love me, I know!" The young man spoke with
joyous certainty, for some inflection of her voice had told the truth
to his heart. Nothing else mattered. "But now, to come back to this hole
we're in here. Don't you understand, at last, that you can't beat the
law? If you're caught here to-night, where would you get off--caught
here with a gang of burglars? Tell me, dear, why did you do it? Why
didn't you protect yourself? Why didn't you go to Chicago as you
planned?"

"What?" There was a new quality in Mary's voice. A sudden throb of shock
masked in the surface indifference of intonation.

Dick repeated his question, unobservant of its first effect.

"Why didn't you go to Chicago as you had planned?"

"Planned? With whom?" The interrogation came with an abrupt force that