, "it's true."

"Ah! We found out also that the money you made by gambling you spent with a
brazen creature who----"

"Stop!" interrupted the American, and turning to the girl he said: "Alice,
I didn't mean to go into these details, I didn't see the need of it,
but----"

"I don't want to know the details," she interrupted. "I know _you_, Lloyd,
that is enough."

She looked him in the eyes trustingly and he blinked a little.

"Plucky!" he murmured. "They're trying to queer me and maybe they will,
but I'm not going to lie about it. Listen. I came to Paris a year ago on
account of a certain person. I thought I loved her and--I made a fool of
myself. I gave up a good position in New York and--after I had been here a
while I went broke. So I gambled. It's pretty bad--I don't defend myself,
only there's one thing I want you to know. This person was not a low woman,
she was a lady."

"Huh!" grunted Mother Bonneton. "A lady! The kind of a lady who dines alone
with gay young gentlemen in private rooms! Aha, we have the facts!"

The young man's eyes kindled. "No matter where she dined, I say she was a
lady, and the proof of it is I--I wanted her to get a divorce and--and
marry me."

"Oh!" winced Alice.

"You see what he is," triumphed the sacristan's wife, "running after a
married woman."

But Kittredge went on doggedly: "You've got to hear the rest now. One day
something happened that--that made me realize what an idiot I had been.
When I say this person was a lady I'm not denying that she raised the devil
with me. She did that good and plenty, so at last I decided to break away
and I did. It wasn't exactly a path of roses for me those weeks, but I
stuck to it, because--because I had some one to help me," he paused and
looked tenderly at Alice, "and--well, I cut the whole thing out, gambling
and all. That was six months ago."

"And the lady?" sneered Mother Bonneton. "Do you mean to tell us you
haven't had anything to do with her for six months?"

"I haven't even seen her," he declared, "for more than six months."

"A likely story! Besides, what we know is enough. I shall write M. Groener
to-night and tell him the facts. Meantime--" She rose and pointed to the
door.

Alice and Kittredge rose also, the one indignant and aggrieved at this
wanton affront to her lover, the other gloomily resigned to what seemed to
be his fate.

"Well," said he, facing Alice with a discouraged gesture, "things are
against us. I'm