only thing I warn you not to laugh at! I loved her because she was
beautiful, fascinating, and as--as bad as I. I knew the poor creature had
never had half a show. She was born in evil and exploited from the cradle
up. Martin knew it, too, and took advantage. She was fair game for him
and his money. When he came down to hell to play, he played with her and
defied me. But on my plane it was man against man, you see, and when he
flung his plaything aside, she came to me; that's all! She told me how he
had brought her where she was--yes, damn him! when she was innocent! She
paid her toll then, _not_ for his money--though who would believe
that?--but for the chance to be decent and clean. He told her, when
she was only sixteen, that the one way she could prove her vows to him
was to give herself to him. If she trusted him so far, he could trust
her. She trusted, poor child! Two years later he married up on his higher
plane--your plane--and laughingly offered a second best place to her. It
was the only bargain she could make then! The rest was an easy downhill
grade.

"Well, I took her. I was all you say, but I meant to do the right
thing by her, and she knew it! Yes, she knew it, and later he came back
and tried to get her away. After I shot him and went to her with the
story--she told me she'd pull herself together and wait for me
until--until I came for her. She understood!"

Ledyard moistened his lips and set his jaws harshly. The story had not
moved him to pity.

"And--where is she now?" he asked.

"In New York, I suppose. She thinks me dead."

"Boswell tells you that?"

"Yes. And he will never let her know. Unless I----"

"You expect to go back--some day?"

Farwell gave a dry, mirthless laugh at this, and then replied:

"After I've been dead long enough, when I've been good long enough,
perhaps. You know even in a disembodied spirit hope dies hard. Yes--I
_had_ hoped to go back."

"I--I thought so." Ledyard leaned forward and across the table; his face
was not three feet from Farwell's.

"I like to trace diseases down to the last germ," he said. "You're a
disease, Farwell Maxwell, a mighty, ugly, dangerous one. You oughtn't to
be alive; you're a menace while you have breath in your body; you should
have died years ago in payment of your debt, just as Martin did, but you
escaped, and now some one has got to keep an eye on you; see that you
don't skip quarantine. You understand?"

Farwell felt the turning