for the
moment.

"Beg your pardon," said the butler from behind, "but wouldn't it be
better for me to get a weapon and arouse the servants?"

"No; ring for the police. I can hold this man. Go and do it--quickly."

The butler slippered out of the room, and the man and the woman sat on,
gazing into each other's eyes. To her it was an experience keen with
enjoyment, and in her mind was the gossip of her crowd, and she saw
notes in the society weeklies of the beautiful young Mrs. Setliffe
capturing an armed robber single-handed. It would create a sensation,
she was sure.

"When you get that sentence you mentioned," she said coldly, "you will
have time to meditate upon what a fool you have been, taking other
persons' property and threatening women with revolvers. You will have
time to learn your lesson thoroughly. Now tell the truth. You haven't
any friend in trouble. All that you told me was lies."

He did not reply. Though his eyes were upon her, they seemed blank. In
truth, for the instant she was veiled to him, and what he saw was the
wide sunwashed spaces of the West, where men and women were bigger than
the rotten denizens, as he had encountered them, of the thrice rotten
cities of the East.

"Go on. Why don't you speak? Why don't you lie some more? Why don't you
beg to be let off?"

"I might," he answered, licking his dry lips. "I might ask to be let off
if..."

"If what?" she demanded peremptorily, as he paused.

"I was trying to think of a word you reminded me of. As I was saying, I
might if you was a decent woman."

Her face paled.

"Be careful," she warned.

"You don't dast kill me," he sneered. "The world's a pretty low down
place to have a thing like you prowling around in it, but it ain't so
plumb low down, I reckon, as to let you put a hole in me. You're sure
bad, but the trouble with you is that you're weak in your badness. It
ain't much to kill a man, but you ain't got it in you. There's where you
lose out."

"Be careful of what you say," she repeated. "Or else, I warn you, it
will go hard with you. It can be seen to whether your sentence is light
or heavy."

"Something's the matter with God," he remarked irrelevantly, "to be
letting you around loose. It's clean beyond me what he's up to, playing
such-like tricks on poor humanity. Now if I was God--"

His further opinion was interrupted by the entrance of the butler.

"Something is wrong with the telephone, madam," he announced. "The w