him if it had."

Nell shuddered.

"Is that the only reason you regret he did not kill you?" she said.

"Am I to speak the truth?"

"Nothing else is ever worth speaking," she remarked, in a low voice.

"Well, then, yes. I am not so enamored of life as to cling to it very
keenly," he said, stifling a sigh. "I don't mean because I have had a
rough time of it--the majority of the sons of men find the way paved
with flints--but because----What an ungrateful brute I must seem to you.
Forgive me; I'm still rather weak."

"Rather!"

"Very weak, then; and I talk like a hysterical girl. But, seriously, if
any man were given his choice, I think he'd prefer to cross the river at
once to facing the gray and dreary days that lie before him."

"But the days that lie before you are brilliant; crimson with fame and
fortune, instead of gray and dreary," she said. "Have you forgotten your
success at--at the ball? that you were to play at the duchess'?
Everybody says that you will become famous, that a great future lies
before you, Mr. Falconer."

"Do they?" he said, gazing at the window dreamily. "No, I have not
forgotten. I wonder whether they are right?"

"I know, I feel, they are right," she said quietly. "Very soon we shall
all be bragging of your acquaintance--I, for one, at any rate. I shall
never lose an opportunity of talking of 'my friend, Mr. Falconer, the
great musician, you know.'"

"Yes," he said, looking at her with a faint smile. "I think you will be
pleased. And I----"

He paused.

"Well?" she asked.

"If the prophecy comes true, I shall spend my time looking back at the
old days, and sighing for the Buildings, for that sunny room of yours,
with the tea kettle singing on the hob, and----Has Dick come back from
Angleford?"

Nell nodded.

"And the man? Has he been committed for trial?"

"Yes," she replied. "But I don't want to speak of that--it isn't good
for you."

He was silent a moment; then he said:

"Do you know, I've got a kind of sneaking pity for the man. He wanted
the diamonds badly--he needed them more than the countess did. What
would it have mattered to her if he had got off with them? And he risked
his liberty and his life for them. A man can't do more than that for the
thing he wants."

Nell tried to laugh.

"I have never listened to a more immoral sentiment," she said. "I think
you had better go to sleep again. But I understand," she added, as if
she were compelled to do so.

"A