part I have always thought of burglars as brutal, low-browed men without

chivalry or courtesy. I’ve been wrong too. I imagined the gentleman-crook was only a fiction and now I find him a fact. Will you please tell me what you’ve heard about me. I’m not fishing for compliments. I want, really and truly, to know.”

Trent hesitated a moment. He thought, as he looked at her, that never had he seen a sweeter face. She was wholly in earnest.

“Please, please,” she entreated.

“It’s probably all wrong,” he observed, “but the general impression is that Norton Guestwick is a wild, weak lad for whom you set your snares. And when Mr. Guestwick tried to break it off you asked fifty-thousand dollars in cash as a price.”

“Do you believe that?” she asked looking at him almost piteously.

“It was common report,” he said, seeking to exonerate himself, “I read some of it in _Gotham Gossip_.”

“And just because of what some spiteful writer said you condemn me unheard.”

He looked at the inviting safe and fidgeted.

“I’m not condemning,” he reminded her. “I don’t know anything about the affair. I don’t yet see why you are here, Miss Grandcourt.”

“Because I have the right to be,” she said, looking him full in the face. “I pretended I was a Miss Guestwick. If you wish to know the truth, I am Mrs. Norton Guestwick. I can show you our marriage certificate. This is the first time I have ever been in the house of my father-in-law.”

“How did you get in?” he demanded. He felt certain that Briggs the butler had shown him into the library believing it to be unoccupied.

“I bribed a servant who used to be in our employ.”

“Your employ?” he queried.

“Why not?” she flung back at him. “Is it also reported that I come from the slums? We were never rich as the Guestwicks are rich, but until my father died we lived in good style as we know it in the South. I am at least as well educated as my sisters-in-law who refuse to recognize that I exist. I was at the Sacred Heart Convent in Paris. I sing and paint and play the piano as well as most girls but do none of these well enough to make a living at it. I came here to New York hoping that through the influence of my father’s friends I could get some sort of a position which would give me a living wage.” She shrugged her shoulders, “I wonder if you know how differently people look at one when one is well off and when one comes begging favors?”

“None better,” he exclaimed bitterly.

“So I had to get in to the chorus because they said my figure would do even if I hadn’t a good enough voice. Then I met Norton.”

She looked at Anthony Trent with a little friendly smile that stirred him oddly. In that moment he envied Norton Guestwick more than any living creature.

“What do they say about my husband?” she asked.

“You can never believe reports,” he said evasively.

“I’ll tell you,” she returned, “they say he is a waster, a libertine, weak and degenerate. They are wrong. He is full of sweet, generous impulses. His mother has so pampered him that he was almost hopeless till I met him. I expect you think it’s conceited of me but I have a great influence on him.”

“You would on any man,” he said fervently.

She looked at him in a way that suggested a certain subtle tribute to his best qualities.

“Ah, but you are different,” she sighed, “you are strong and resolute. You would sway the woman you loved and make her what you wanted her to be. He is clay for my molding and I want him to be a splendid, fine son like my father.” She looked at Trent with a tender, proud smile, “If you had ever met my father you would understand.”

Anthony Trent shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He had not dared for months now to think of that kindly country physician who died from the exposure attendant on a trip during a blizzard to aid a penniless patient.

“I know what you mean,” he said at length, “and I think it is splendid of you. Good God! why can people like the Guestwicks object to a girl like you?”

“They’ve never seen me,” she explained, “and that’s the main trouble. They persist in thinking of me as a champagne-drinking adventuress who wants to blackmail them. That money"--she pointed to the safe, “I didn’t ask for it. Mr. Guestwick offered it to me as a bribe to give up my husband and consent to a divorce.”

“But I still don’t see why you are here,” he said.

“Our old servant arranged it. She says they always come up here after the opera, all four of them. If I confront them they must see I’m not the sort of girl they think me. I’m dreading it horribly but it’s the only way.”

Anthony Trent looked at her with open admiration.

“You’ll win,” he cried enthusiastically, “I feel it in my bones.”

“And when I absolutely refuse to take their money they _must_ see I’m not the adventuress they call me.”

Anthony Trent had by this time forgotten the money. The mention of it reminded him of his errand and the fleeting minutes.

“If you don’t take it, what is going to happen to it?”

“I’m going to tell Mr. Guestwick that he can’t buy me.”

“But I’m willing to be bought,” he said, forcing a smile. “In fact that’s what I came for.”

She shrunk back as though he had struck her. Her big eyes looked reproach at him. Tremulous eager words seemed forced from her by the agitation into which his words had thrown her.

“You couldn’t do that now,” she wailed, “not now you know. They’ll be in very soon now and what could I say if the money was gone? Don’t you see they would send me away in disgrace and Norton would believe that I was just as bad as they said? Then he’d divorce me and I think my heart would break.”

“Damn!” muttered Trent. Things were happening in an unexpected fashion. He tried not to look at her piteous face.

“Please be kind to me,” she begged, “this is your opportunity to do one great noble thing.”

“It really means so much to you?” he asked.

“It means everything,” she said simply.

He paced the room for a minute or more. He was fighting a great battle. There remained in him, despite his mode of living, a certain generosity of character, a certain fineness bequeathed him by generations of honorable folk. He saw clearly what the girl meant. She was here to fight for her happiness and the redemption of the man she loved. How small a thing, it seemed to him suddenly, was the necessity he had felt for obtaining the miserable money. What stinging mordant memories would always be his if he refused her!

There was a tenderness, a protective look in his eyes when he glanced down at her. He was his father’s son again.

“It means something to me, too,” he told her, “to do as you want, and I don’t believe there’s a person on this green earth I’d do it for but you.”

His hand lingered for a moment on her white shoulder.

“Good luck, little girl.”

The partly lighted hall full of mysterious shadows awakened no fear in him as he quietly descended the stairs. And when he came to the avenue he did not glance up and down as he usually did to see whether or not he was being followed.

There was a lightness of heart and an exaltation of spirit which he had never experienced. It was that happiness which alone comes to the man who has made a sacrifice. There was never a moment since he had abandoned fiction that he was nearer to returning to its uncertain rewards. Pipe after pipe he smoked when he was once more in his quiet room and asked himself why he had done this thing. There were two reasons hard to dissociate. First, this wonderful girl had reminded him of the man he had passionately admired--his father, the father who had taught him to play fair. And then he was forced to admit he had never been more drawn to any woman than to this girl, who must, before his last pipe was smoked, have won her victory or gone down to defeat. Again and again he told himself that there was no man he envied so much as Norton Guestwick.