known.
Before I go I jest want to say I know I was wrong from the beginnin'.
All I want to say is that I was jest all sort of tied up in a knot
inside and when I seen you with him--" He stopped. "I hope you marry
some gent that's worth you, only they ain't any such. An'--I want to
wish you good-luck, an' say good-by--"

He swept the perspiration from his forehead, and caught up his hat; he
had been through the seventh circle of torture.

"Oh, Vic, dear!" cried a voice he had never heard before. Then a flurry
of skirts, then arms about him, then tears and laughter, and eyes which
went hungrily over his face.

"I been a houn'-dog. My God, Betty, you don't mean--"

"That I love you, Vic. I never knew what it was to love you before."

"After I been a man-killin', lyin', sneakin'--"

"Don't you say another word. Vic, it was all my fault."

"It wasn't. It was mine. But if you'd only kind of held off a little and
gone easy with me."

"You didn't give me a chance."

"When I looked back from the road you wasn't standin' in the door."

"I was. And you didn't look back."

"I did."

"Vic Gregg, are you trying to--"

But the anger fled from her as suddenly as it had come.

"I don't care. I'll take all the blame."

"I don't want you to. I won't let you."

She laughed hysterically.

"Vic, tell me that you're free?"

"I'm paroled."

"Thank God! Oh, I've prayed and prayed--Vic, don't talk. Sit down
there--so! I just want to look and look at you. There's a hollow, hungry
place in me that's filling up again."

"It was Pete Glass," said Gregg brokenly. "He--he trusted me clean
through when the rest was lookin' at me like I was a snake. Pete got
word to the governor, an'--"

There followed a long interval of talk that meant nothing, and then,
as the afternoon waned towards evening, and the evening toward dark, he
told her the whole story of the long adventure. He left out nothing, not
a detail that might tell against him. When he came to the moment when
Glass persuaded him to go back and betray Barry he winced, but set his
jaw and plunged ahead. She, too, paled when she heard that, and for a
moment she had to cover her eyes, but she was older by half a life-time
than she had been when he was last with her, and now she read below the
surface. Besides, Vic had offered to undo what he had done, had offered
to stay and fight for Barry, and surely that evened the score!

There was a light rap on the door, and then Mr