er hands clasped before her, her eyes shining,
her figure tense, her cheeks stained with the color of her excitement.

"I don't care whether Patten is a physician or not," she ran on. "He
is a bungler. It is a sheer wonder he did not let you die. You told
me yourself that he attributed the second wound to your fall and that
you knew that Moraga had struck you a terrible blow with his
gun-barrel. Patten did not treat that wound; he cared for the lesser
injury like a fool and allowed the major one to take care of itself.
And the result . . . Oh, dear God! Think of what might have happened.
If any one but me had learned what I have learned to-night."

He rose with her, stood still, regarding her with eyes like drills.
Then he shook his head.

"You are wrong, Virginia, dead wrong," he told her with quiet emphasis.
"You have called me a thief? Well, perhaps I am. You have given your
explanation; let me give mine."

He paused, shaping the matter in mind. His face was stern and very,
very grave. Presently, his lowered voice guarded against any chance
ears, he continued.

"I lay on my bed a week, a long, utterly damnable week. I could do
nothing but think. So I thought, as I told you, of everything. Most
of all I thought of you, Virginia Page. Shall I tell you why? No;
we'll let that go until we understand each other. I thought of myself,
of my life, of my eternal striving with Jim Galloway. Some day I
should get Galloway or he would get me. In either case, what good?
Was not Galloway a wiser man than I? He took what he wanted; I merely
wasted my time chasing after such bigger men as he. If he desired a
thousand dollars or five, ten thousand, he went out for it like a man
and took it. Why shouldn't he? Oh, I tell you I had the time to dwell
upon the little meaningless words of honesty and dishonesty, honor and
dishonor, and all of their progeny and forebears! They are empty;
empty, I tell you, Virginia! When I stood on my feet again I was a
free man. I knew it then, I know it now. Free, I tell you. Free,
most of all from shackles of empty ideas. What I wanted I would take."

She looked at him helplessly, his dominant vigor for the moment seeming
a thing not to be restricted or tamed.

"What you have done," she told him gently, "is to find argument to
bolster up impulse. That is generally very easy to do, isn't it? If
one wants a thing, it is not hard convincing himself that it is right
that