lity came to him. "D'you suppose he
could always have had that plan--to make you into a crook?" he asked.

"What difference does that make?" she demanded shortly.

"A funny thing for a father to do with his own child," Larry returned.
"But whether Jimmie intended it or not, that's just what he's done."

"What I am, I am," she retorted with her imperious defiance. Just then
she felt that she hated him; she quivered with a desire to hurt him: he
had so utterly destroyed her romantic hero and her romantic dreams. Her
hands clenched.

"You talk about going straight--it's all rot!" she flamed at him. "A lot
of men say they're going straight, but no one ever does! And you won't
either!"

"You think I won't?"

"I know you won't! You don't know how to do any regular work. And,
besides, no one will give a crook a chance."

She had unerringly placed her finger upon his two great problems, and
Larry knew it; he had considered them often enough.

"All the same, I'm going to make good!" he declared.

"Oh, no, you're not!"

Perhaps he was stirred chiefly by the sting of her taunting tongue,
by the blaze of her dark, disdainful eyes; and perhaps by the changed
feeling toward this creature whom he had left a half-grown girl and
returned to find a woman. At any rate, he crossed and seized her wrists
and gazed fiercely down upon her.

"I tell you, I'm going to go straight, and I'm going to make a success
of it! You'll see!" And then he added dominantly: "What's more, I'm
going to make you go straight, too!"

She made no attempt to free herself, but blazed up at him defiantly.
"You'll make me do nothing. I'm going to be just what I said, and I'm
going to make a success of it. Just wait--I'll prove to you what I can
do! And you--you'll be a failure, and will come slinking back and beg us
to take you in!"

They glared at each other silently, angrily, their aroused wills defying
each other. For a moment they stood so. Then something--a mixture of his
desire to dominate this defiant young thing and of that growing change
in him toward her--surged madly into Larry's head. He caught Maggie in
his arms and kissed her.

All the rigidity went suddenly from her figure and she hung loose in his
embrace. Their gazes held for a moment. She went pale, and quivering
all through she looked up at him in startled, wide-eyed silence. As
for Larry, a dizzying, throbbing emotion permeated his whole astonished
being.

Suddenly she pushed he