'd give poor
Tom, and all at once--

You'd have sniffled yourself, Mag Monahan. There I was--caught. The
cop'd be after me in five minutes. With Tom jugged, and me in
stripes--it wasn't very jolly, and I lost my nerve.

"Ashamed--huh?" he said lightly.

I nodded. I was ashamed.

"Pity you didn't get ashamed before you broke in here."

"What the devil was there to be ashamed of?"

The sting in his voice had cured me. I never was a weeper. I sat up,
my face blazing, and stared at him. He'd got me to hand over to the
cop, but he hadn't got me to sneer at.

I saw by the look he gave me, that he hadn't really seen me till then.

"Well," he answered, "what the devil is there to be ashamed of now?"

"Of being caught--that's what."

"Oh!"

He tilted back again on his chair and laughed softly.

"Then you're not ashamed of your profession?"

"Are you of yours?"

"Well--there's a slight difference."

"Not much, whatever it may be. It's your graft--it's everybody's--to
take all he can get, and keep out of jail. That's mine, too."

"But you see I keep out of jail."

"I see you're not there--yet."

"Oh, I think you needn't worry about that. I'll keep out, thank you;
imprisonment for debt don't go nowadays."

"Debt?"

"I'm a theatrical manager, my girl, and I'm not on the inside: which is
another way of saying that a man who can't swim has fallen overboard."

"And when you do go down--"

"A little less exultation, my dear, or I might suppose you'd be glad
when I do."

"Well, when you know yourself going down for the last time, do you mean
to tell me you won't grasp at a straw like--like this?" I nodded toward
the open window, and the desk with all its papers tumbling out.

"Not much." He shook his head, and bit the end of a cigar with sharp,
white teeth. "It's a fool graft. I'm self-respecting. And I don't
admire fools." He lit his cigar and puffed a minute, taking out his
watch to look at it, as cold-bloodedly as though we were waiting, he
and I, to go to supper together. Oh, how I hated him!

"Honesty isn't the best policy," he went on; "it's the only one. The
vain fool that gets it into his head--or shall I say her head? No?
Well, no offense, I assure you--his head then, that he's smarter than a
world full of experience, ought to be put in jail--for his own
protection; he's too big a jay to be left out of doors. For five
thousand years, more or less, the world has been putting peop