to it.
People said I behaved badly, but I didn't care. I couldn't look at, or
think of, another woman after I had seen her. She enslaved me. I was
hers, body and soul. She held me helpless. I was only one of many, but I
was a favored one--at least, I thought so."

He told his story slowly, in a low voice, without emotion. He was
staring out straight in front of him, forgetful of his surroundings and
his listener. The past held him.

"My family warned me, and threatened me. I knew they were telling me the
truth--but I wouldn't listen. I hadn't been brought up to care what
results my actions brought on other people. I thought only of myself--of
the indulgence of my own desires. I lived a useless, contemptible
life--entirely without scruples or restraints. There was scarcely a vice
that I was not steeped in--hardly a sin that I had not explored. I had
enough money to gratify all my senses. Nothing was beneath me. I plunged
into every depravity. I made new depths for myself." He clenched his
hands. "And I led others after me."

There was another pause. He sat rigid. The inspector waited patiently.

"I need not trouble you with unnecessary details," the low voice went
on. "It is enough that for her sake I sacrificed all my prospects--I
threw away my heritage. To keep her for myself I squandered every cent I
could lay my hands on. I robbed my own brother. I forged my father's
name. I did ... other things. It was only the generosity of my family
that kept me from gaol. And Thea threw me over."

"Apparently," the inspector remarked, not unsympathetically, "her
standard of morality was on a somewhat similar level."

"She is dead," said the young man gently. "'_De mortuis nil nisi
bonum._'"

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

"As you please," he said. "Go on."

"She refused to see me--to have anything more to do with me. She cut me
out of her life with one stroke. For the first time I knew she hadn't
cared. That broke me. I was very ill. For a year I knew no one. I
couldn't hear or speak. They fed me like a child. They thought I was
mad"--his eyes began to gleam unnaturally, his words quickened--"but in
reality I was in the presence of God. I was in the image I had brought
upon my soul--black, hideous, distorted, reeking with the filth of my
sins. I saw myself--in all the degradation I had brought upon the Shape
of God. I saw my own page in the Book of Life. All the entries were on
the debit side. The credit side w