ou hard and cold I don't know;
but you can't unsay what's been said. And it hurt--bitter."

"Oh, I know, I know!" says she. "But you must hear what it was that
changed me from the girl you knew. Money, Larry, the money for which I
married. As for the man--oh, I suppose he was no worse than the rest;
only he taught me to love a dollar more than anything else in earth or
heaven. He'd wrung all of his from a grudging world with his bare
hands,--starved and slaved and plotted for it, in mean ways, against
mean men; then fought to hold it. And he knew to a penny's worth what
every dollar he spent should buy for him. Among other things, he bought
me. Sixty-odd he was; I barely twenty. Why call it differently? I was
fool enough, too, to think I was a lucky girl. Ah, what a fool! Seven
years of fear and hate! It's an awful thing, Larry, to live so long
with hate in you for one at your side. But he--he never knew."

She leaves off, squeezin' one hand in the other until the ends of the
fingers went white, her chest heavin', her eyes stary. Larry watches her
without a word.

"Tell me," says she after a bit, "why you ran away that time and left me
to--to make such a mess of things. Why?"

"For the same reason that I'm going away again now," says he. "I've a
thousand pounds a year, and not sense enough to keep myself on it, let
alone a wife. So it's good-by, Katie."

Then the weeps came, open eyed; but she didn't try to hide 'em. "Oh,
oh!" she moans. "But I was so lonely then, and--and I'm so lonely now!"

Them few drops of brine turned the trick. "Ah, Katie McDevitt!" says he.
"If I could bring back the old Katie! By the soul of me, but I will? You
never heard of my old uncle, did you? Come with me to him, and see me
make it up; for I can't leave you this way, Katie, I just can't!"

"Larry!" says she, and with that they goes to a fond clinch.

"Help!" says I, and slides through the door.

When I gets home Sadie wants to know what I've done with Mr. Bolan.

"Towed him up to Hymen's gate," says I, "and left him bein' yanked
through by Mrs. Sam Steele."

"Wha-a-at?" says she. "Of all persons! And when did that start, I'd like
to know?"

"Eight years back," says I. "She was Katie the nurse, and this is their
second act. Anyway, he ducks Bulgaroo by it."

CHAPTER XVII

BAYARD DUCKS HIS PAST

First place, Swifty Joe should have let the subject drop. Anyway, he
needn't have come paradin' into the front office in