is
bad enough, God knows; but a conscienceless woman----"

Her laugh was a decorous little shriek.

"David, you are _not_ big; you are narrow, narrow, _narrow_! Is there then
no other code of morals in the round world save that which the accident of
birth has interleaved with your New England Bible? What is conscience? Is
it an absolute standard of right and wrong? Or is it merely your ideal or
mine, or Shafiz Ullah Khan's?"

"You may call it all the hard names you can lay tongue to," he allowed.
"I'm not getting much comfort out of it, and I rather enjoy hearing it
abused. But you are thrusting at a shadow in the present instance. Do you
know what I did this afternoon?"

"How should I know?"

"I don't know why you shouldn't: you know everything that happens. But
I'll tell you. I had been fighting the thing over from start to finish and
back again ever since you blessed me out a week ago last Monday, and at
the wind-up this afternoon I took the papers out of the bank vault, having
it in mind to go and give his Excellency a bad quarter of an hour."

"But you didn't do it?"

"No, he saved me the trouble. While I was getting ready to go and hunt
him, his card came up. We had it out in my rooms."

"I'm listening," she said; and he rehearsed the-facts for her, concealing
nothing.

"What a curious thing human nature is!" she commented, when he had made an
end. "My better judgment says you were all kinds of a somebody for not
clinching the nail when you had it so well driven home. And yet I can't
help admiring your exalted fanaticism. I do love consistency, and the
courage of it. But tell me, if you can, how far these fair-fighting
scruples of yours go. You have made it perfectly plain that if a thief
should steal your pocketbook, you would suffer loss before you'd
compromise with him to get it back. But suppose you should catch him at
it: would you feel compelled to call a policeman--or would you----"

He anticipated her.

"You are doing me an injustice on the other side, now. I'll fight as
furiously as you like. All I ask is to be given a weapon that won't bloody
my hands."

"Good!" she said approvingly. "I think I have found the weapon, but it's
desperate, desperate! And O David! you've got to have a cool head and a
steady hand when you use it. If you haven't, it will kill everybody within
the swing of it--everybody but the man you are trying to reach."

"Draw it and let me feel its edge," he said shortly.