ou see? Now I find you guilty.
As between you and me, yesterday, on the river, you did not so regard
it. You behaved as narrow-mindedly as would have the society you
represent."

"Then you would preach two doctrines?" he retaliated. "One for the
elect and one for the herd? You would be a democrat in theory and an
aristocrat in practice? In fact, the whole stand you are making is
nothing more or less than Jesuitical."

"I suppose with the next breath you will be contending that all men are
born free and equal, with a bundle of natural rights thrown in? You
are going to have Del Bishop work for you; by what equal free-born
right will he work for you, or you suffer him to work?"

"No," he denied. "I should have to modify somewhat the questions of
equality and rights."

"And if you modify, you are lost!" she exulted. "For you can only
modify in the direction of my position, which is neither so Jesuitical
nor so harsh as you have defined it. But don't let us get lost in
dialectics. I want to see what I can see, so tell me about this woman."

"Not a very tasteful topic," Corliss objected.

"But I seek knowledge."

"Nor can it be wholesome knowledge."

Frona tapped her foot impatiently, and studied him.

"She is beautiful, very beautiful," she suggested. "Do you not think
so?"

"As beautiful as hell."

"But still beautiful," she insisted.

"Yes, if you will have it so. And she is as cruel, and hard, and
hopeless as she is beautiful."

"Yet I came upon her, alone, by the trail, her face softened, and tears
in her eyes. And I believe, with a woman's ken, that I saw a side of
her to which you are blind. And so strongly did I see it, that when
you appeared my mind was blank to all save the solitary wail, _Oh, the
pity of it_! _The pity of it_! And she is a woman, even as I, and I
doubt not that we are very much alike. Why, she even quoted
Browning--"

"And last week," he cut her short, "in a single sitting, she gambled
away thirty thousand of Jack Dorsey's dust,--Dorsey, with two mortgages
already on his dump! They found him in the snow next morning, with one
chamber empty in his revolver."

Frona made no reply, but, walking over to the candle, deliberately
thrust her finger into the flame. Then she held it up to Corliss that
he might see the outraged skin, red and angry.

"And so I point the parable. The fire is very good, but I misuse it,
and I am punished."

"You forget," he objected.