d and clanged shut again. Then I wheeled to find myself
looking straight into the man-melting eyes.

"Oh, Herbert!" she gasped; and with that she dropped upon the cot and
put her face in her hands.

If only the women wouldn't weep at us how vastly different this world
would be! All day long I had been praying that I might some time have
the chance to hold a mirror up to Agatha Geddis; a mirror that would
reflect her soul and show her what a mean and shriveled thing it was.
But what I did was to sit beside her and put my arm around her and try
to comfort her as I might have comforted my sister.

When her sobbing fit had subsided and she began to talk I found out
what she had come for--or I thought I did. It was all a miserable
mistake--so she protested--and Abner Withers was the responsible one.
It was he who had insisted that I should be arrested and prosecuted;
and, thus far, her father had not been able to make him listen to
reason. But it would come out all right in the end, if I would only be
patient and wait. Mr. Whitredge had been up to the house to see her
father, and they had had a long talk. Among other things, she had
heard her father say that he would bear all the expenses, meaning--I
supposed--that he would see to it that Whitredge did not lose his fee.

I have more than once had professional mesmerists try to hypnotize me,
without success. But there is little doubt that Agatha Geddis turned
the trick for me that afternoon in the steel cell of the Glendale
police station. As she talked, my heart grew putty-soft again. As
before, she dwelt upon the terrible consequences, the awful disgrace,
the wreck of her happiness, and all that; and once more I promised her
that I would stand by her. Even after she had gone I told myself that
since the worst had already happened, it would be cowardly and unmanly
to turn back.

Later, when the reaction came, it is more than likely that I swung back
to the other extreme, writing Agatha Geddis down in the book of bitter
remembrances as a cold-blooded, plotting fiend in woman's form. She
was not that. It may be said that, at this earlier period, she was
merely a loosely bound fagot of evil potentialities. Doubtless the
threatened cataclysm appeared sufficiently terrifying to her, and she
was willing to use any means that might offer to avert it. But it may
be conceded, in bare justice, that in this stage of her development she
was nothing worse than a self-c