hrough
love. Do you think it's easy to give up gambling? Try it! Do you think it's
easy to live in a measly little room up six flights of black, smelly
stairs, with no fire in winter? Anyhow, it wasn't easy for me, but I did
it--through love, yes, sir, _pure_ love."

As Hauteville listened, his frown deepened, his eyes grew harder. "That's
all very fine," he objected, "but if you hated this woman, why did you risk
prison and--worse, to get her things? You knew what you were risking, I
suppose?"

"Yes, I knew."

"Why did you do it?"

Kittredge hesitated. "I did it for--for what she had been to me. It meant
ruin and disgrace for her and--well, if she could ask such a thing, I could
grant it. It was like paying a debt, and--I paid mine."

The judge turned to Mrs. Wilmott: "Did you know that he had ceased to love
you?"

Pussy Wilmott, with her fine eyes to the floor, answered almost in a
whisper: "Yes, I knew it."

"Do you know what he means by saying that you would have spoiled his life
and--and all that?"

"N-not exactly."

"You _do_ know!" cried the American. "You know I had given you my life in
sacred pledge, and you made a plaything of it. You told me you were
unhappy, married to a man you loathed, a dull brute; but when I offered you
freedom and my love, you drew back. When I begged you to leave him and
become my wife, with the law's sanction, you said no, because I was poor
and he was rich. You wanted a lover, but you wanted your luxury, too; and I
saw that what I had thought the call of your soul was only the call of your
body. Your beauty had blinded me, your eyes, your mouth, your voice, the
smell of you, the taste of you, the devilish siren power of you, all these
had blinded me. I saw that your talk about love was a lie. Love! What did
you know about love? You wanted me, along with your ease and your
pleasures, as a coarse creator of sensations, and you couldn't have me on
those terms. In my madness I would have done anything for you, borne
anything; I would have starved for you, toiled for you, yes, gladly; but
you didn't want that kind of sacrifice. You couldn't see why I worried
about money. There was plenty for us both where yours came from. God! Where
yours came from! Why couldn't I leave well enough alone and enjoy an easy
life in Paris, with a nicely furnished _rez de chaussee_ off the Champs
Elysees, where madam could drive up in her carriage after luncheon and
break the Seventh Commandment c