reat difference, one way or the
other. So far as anybody out here knows to the contrary, you are a
free man--and a rich one; and so long as you haven't committed bigamy
or something of that sort, the average girl wouldn't care the snap of
her finger. Up to a few days ago I thought the brown-eyed little thing
you brought up here one night last fall to the theater was the average
girl. But now I know better."

It had always seemed a sheer sacrilege to even mention Mary Everton in
Agatha Geddis's presence. But this time I broke over.

"You know who she is?" I queried.

"I do now. And I know her _metier_ even better than you do, Bertie,
dear. She might go to her grave loving you to distraction, but she
would never have an ex-convict for the father of her children--not if
she knew it. It's in the Everton blood. Anybody who knew Phineas
Everton as you and I did in the old school-days, ought to know exactly
what to expect of his daughter."

I sat up quickly, and the lights in the high-swung drawing-room
chandelier began to turn red for me.

"You devil! Do you mean to say that you would tell Polly Everton?" I
burst out savagely.

"I'm not going to tell her because you are not going to drive me to
it,"--this with a half-stifled yawn behind a faultless white hand that
was just beginning to show the blue veining of bad hours and
dissipation. Then: "Go back to your hotel and go to bed, Bertie.
You'll wake up in a better frame of mind a few hours later, perhaps.
Kiss me, and say good-night."

As I have confessed, I carried a gun in those days; had carried one
ever since that memorable afternoon when I had dropped from the
trolley-car in Cripple Creek to preface the opening of our business
office by going first to a hardware shop for the purchase of a weapon.
After leaving the Altberg house I dismissed the night-owl cab on the
north bank of the river and crossed the Platte on the viaduct afoot.

Half-way over I stopped to look down into the winter-dry bed of the
stream. There was one way out of the wretched labyrinth of shame and
double-dealing into which my weakness and cowardice had led me. The
weapon sagged heavily in my pocket as if it were a sentient thing
trying in some dumb fashion to make its presence felt.

It was but a gripping of the pistol and a quick pull at the trigger,
and I should be out of the labyrinth for good and all. I don't know
why I didn't do it; why I hadn't done it long before--or rat