y equipped. This last feeling had
nothing to do with the material fact of the revolver being stolen. She
could hardly appreciate that fact at its full value.

Observing her eyes fixed and as if sightless--for the concentration on
her purpose took all expression out of them--Heyst imagined it to be the
effect of a great mental effort.

"No use asking me what he meant, Lena; I don't know, and I did not
ask him. The gentleman, as I have told you before, seems devoted to
mystification. I said nothing, and he laid down his head again on
the bundle of rugs he uses for a pillow. He affects a state of great
weakness, but I suspect that he's perfectly capable of leaping to his
feet if he likes. Having been ejected, he said, from his proper social
sphere because he had refused to conform to certain usual conventions,
he was a rebel now, and was coming and going up and down the earth. As
I really did not want to listen to all this nonsense, I told him that
I had heard that sort of story about somebody else before. His grin is
really ghastly. He confessed that I was very far from the sort of man he
expected to meet. Then he said:

"'As to me, I am no blacker than the gentleman you are thinking of, and
I have neither more nor less determination.'"

Heyst looked across the table at Lena. Propped on her elbows, and
holding her head in both hands, she moved it a little with an air of
understanding.

"Nothing could be plainer, eh?" said Heyst grimly. "Unless, indeed, this
is his idea of a pleasant joke; for, when he finished speaking, he burst
into a loud long laugh. I didn't join him!"

"I wish you had," she breathed out.

"I didn't join him. It did not occur to me. I am not much of a
diplomatist. It would probably have been wise, for, indeed, I believe
he had said more than he meant to say, and was trying to take it back by
this affected jocularity. Yet when one thinks of it, diplomacy without
force in the background is but a rotten reed to lean upon. And I don't
know whether I could have done it if I had thought of it. I don't know.
It would have been against the grain. Could I have done it? I have lived
too long within myself, watching the mere shadows and shades of life.
To deceive a man on some issue which could be decided quicker, by his
destruction while one is disarmed, helpless, without even the power to
run away--no! That seems to me too degrading. And yet I have you here.
I have your very existence in my keeping. Wha