dead-sure
thing--and I was hard up, and Kathleen wouldn't lend me any more. If
Kathleen had only done the decent thing--"

A sudden flush of anger swept over Charley's face--never before in his
life had that face been so sensitive, never even as a child. Something
had waked in the odd soul of Beauty Steele.

"Don't be a sweep--leave Kathleen out of it!" he said, in a sharp,
querulous voice--a voice unnatural to himself, suggestive of little use,
as though he were learning to speak, using strange words stumblingly
through a melee of the emotions. It was not the voice of Charley Steele
the fop, the poseur, the idlest man in the world.

"What part of the twenty-five thousand went into the arsenic?" he said,
after a pause. There was no feeling in the voice now; it was again even
and inquiring.

"Nearly all."

"Don't lie. You've been living freely. Tell the truth, or--or I'll know
the reason why, Billy."

"About two-thirds-that's the truth. I had debts, and I paid them."

"And you bet on the races?"

"Yes."

"And lost?"

"Yes. See here, Charley; it was the most awful luck--"

"Yes, for the fatherless children and widows, and all that are
oppressed!"

Charley's look again went through and beyond the culprit, and he
recalled his wife's words and his own reply. A quick contempt and a sort
of meditative sarcasm were in the tone. It was curious, too, that he
could smile, but the smile did not encourage Billy Wantage now.

"It's all gone, I suppose?" he added.

"All but about a hundred dollars."

"Well, you have had your game; now you must pay for it."

Billy had imagination, and he was melodramatic. He felt danger ahead.

"I'll go and shoot myself!" he said, banging the table with his fist so
that the whiskey-tumbler shook.

He was hardly prepared for what followed. Charley's nerves had been
irritated; his teeth were on edge. This threat, made in such a cheap,
insincere way, was the last thing in the world he could bear to hear.
He knew that Billy lied; that if there was one thing Billy would not
do, shooting himself was that one thing. His own life was very sweet to
Billy Wantage. Charley hated him the more at that moment because he was
Kathleen's brother. For if there was one thing he knew of Kathleen, it
was that she could not do a mean thing. Cold, unsympathetic she might
be, cruel at a pinch perhaps, but dishonourable--never! This weak,
cowardly youth was her brother! No one had ever seen such a look