light tone:

"Nothing less. And it isn't because I think little of what I've got
already. Oh, no! It is because I think so much of this possession of
mine that I can't have it complete enough. I know it's unreasonable. You
can't hold back anything--now."

"Indeed I couldn't," she whispered, letting her hand lie passive in his
tight grasp. "I only wish I could give you something more, or better, or
whatever it is you want."

He was touched by the sincere accent of these simple words.

"I tell you what you can do--you can tell me whether you would have gone
with me like this if you had known of whom that abominable idiot of a
hotel-keeper was speaking. A murderer--no less!"

"But I didn't know you at all then," she cried. "And I had the sense to
understand what he was saying. It wasn't murder, really. I never thought
it was."

"What made him invent such an atrocity?" Heyst exclaimed. "He seems
a stupid animal. He is stupid. How did he manage to hatch that pretty
tale? Have I a particularly vile countenance? Is black selfishness
written all over my face? Or is that sort of thing so universally human
that it might be said of anybody?"

"It wasn't murder," she insisted earnestly.

"I know. I understand. It was worse. As to killing a man, which would be
a comparatively decent thing to do, well--I have never done that."

"Why should you do it?" she asked in a frightened voice.

"My dear girl, you don't know the sort of life I have been leading in
unexplored countries, in the wilds; it's difficult to give you an idea.
There are men who haven't been in such tight places as I have found
myself in who have had to--to shed blood, as the saying is. Even the
wilds hold prizes which tempt some people; but I had no schemes, no
plans--and not even great firmness of mind to make me unduly obstinate.
I was simply moving on, while the others, perhaps, were going somewhere.
An indifference as to roads and purposes makes one meeker, as it were.
And I may say truly, too, that I never did care, I won't say for life--I
had scorned what people call by that name from the first--but for being
alive. I don't know if that is what men call courage, but I doubt it
very much."

"You! You have no courage?" she protested.

"I really don't know. Not the sort that always itches for a weapon, for
I have never been anxious to use one in the quarrels that a man gets
into in the most innocent way sometimes. The differences for which
men murder