you.
Perhaps the mere fact of my being a woman is enough to make that
impossible. Only don't throw your scorn at me for believing what you
can't believe. Talk quietly; avoid those subjects; tell me, if you wish
to, what you are doing or think of doing."

"You should have spoken like this earlier, Miriam. It would have spared
my memory its most wretched burden."

"How?"

"You know quite well that I valued your affection, and that it had no
little importance in my life. Instead of still having my sister, I had
only the memory of her anger and injustice, and of my own cursed
temper."

"I had no influence for good."

"Perhaps not in the common sense of the words. I am not going to talk
humbug about a woman's power to make a man angelic; that will do for
third-rate novels and plays. But I shouldn't have thrown myself away as
I have done if you had cared to know what I was doing."

"Did I not care, Reuben?"

"If so, you thought it was your duty not to show it. You thought
harshness was the only proper treatment for a case such as mine. I had
had too much of that."

"What did you mean just now by speaking as though you were poor?"

"I have been poor for a long time--poor compared with what I was. Most
of my money has gone--on the fool's way. I haven't come here to lament
over it. It's one of my rules never, if I can help it, to think of the
past. What has been, has been; and what will be, will be. When I fume
and rage like an idiot, that's only the blood in me getting the better
of the brain; an example of the fault that always wrecks me. Do you
think I cannot see myself? Just now, I couldn't keep back the insensate
words--insensate because useless--but I judged myself all the time as
distinctly as I do now it's over."

"Your money gone, Reuben?" murmured his sister, in consternation.

"You might have foreseen that. Come and sit down by me, Miriam. I am
tired and wretched. Where is the sun? Surely one may have sunshine at
Naples!"

He was now idly fretful. Miriam seated herself at his side, and he took
her hand.

"I thought you might perhaps receive me like this at first. I came only
with that hope. I wish you looked better, Miriam. How do you employ
yourself here?"

"I am much out of doors. I get stronger."

"You spoke of old Mallard. I'm glad he is here, really glad. You know,
Mallard's a fellow of no slight account; I should think you might even
like him."

"But yourself, Reuben?"

"No, no; let me r