u can say the prayers and keep house."

"Knowing that you are a criminal? That your hands are stained with human
blood?"

"Why not?" he snapped, the blue blaze flashing again in his eyes.
"Suppose you were the wife of the gentlemanly lawyer-thief who robbed
me, using the law instead of a jimmy--would you bother your little head
about my business? Does his wife ask him where he got it? Does anybody
know or care? He lives on Fifth Avenue now. He bought a palace up there
the day after he got my money. We passed it on the way to the Park the
day I met you. A line of carriages was standing in front and finely
dressed women were running up the red carpet that led down the stoop and
under the canopy to the curb. Did any of the gay dames who smiled and
smirked at that thief's wife ask how he got the money to buy the house?
Not much. Would they have cared if they had known? They'd have called
him a shrewd lawyer--that's all! Do you reckon his wife worries about
such tricks of trade? Why should mine worry?"

She gripped his hand with desperate pleading.

"Oh, Jim, dear, you can't be a criminal at heart! I wouldn't have loved
you if it had been true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it. You're
posing. You don't mean this. You can't mean it. You're going to return
every dishonest dollar that you've taken."

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

He closed his jaw with a snap and leaned close in eager, tense
excitement.

"Do you know how much junk I've piled into a little box in my shop the
past three months?"

"I don't care--I don't want to know!"

"You've got to care--you've got to know now! It's worth a hundred
thousand dollars, do you hear? A hundred thousand dollars! It would take
me a life-time to earn that on a salary. In two weeks after we get back
to New York with my new invention that lawyer advised me to make, I'll
go through his house--I'll open his safe, I'll take every diamond, every
pearl and every scrap of stolen jewelry his wife's wearing. And I won't
leave a fingerprint on the window sill. I've got two of his servants
working for me.

"In six months I'll be worth half a million. In a year I'll pull off
the big haul I'm planning and I'll be a millionaire. We'll retire from
business then--just like they did. We'll build our marble palace down at
Bay Ridge and our yacht will nod in the harbor. We'll spend our summers
in Europe when we like and every snob and fool in New York will fall
over himsel