said. "He belonged to her, not to us. And we
must take her home with us.

"No," answered Kate Marcy' "I don't want to go. I wouldn't live," she
added with unexpected intensity, "with him."

"You would live with me," said Alison.

"I don't want to live!" Kate Marcy got up from the chair with an energy
they had not thought her to possess, a revival of the spirit which had
upheld her when she had contended, singly, with a remorseless world. She
addressed herself to Eldon Parr. "You took him from me, and I was a fool
to let you. He might have saved me and saved himself. I listened to you
when you told me lies as to how it would ruin him . . . . Well,--I had
him you never did."

The sudden, intolerable sense of wrong done to her love, the swift anger
which followed it, the justness of her claim of him who now lay in the
dignity of death clothed her--who in life had been crushed and blotted
out--with a dignity not to be gainsaid. In this moment of final
self-assertion she became the dominating person in the room, knew for
once the birthright of human worth. They watched her in silence as she
turned and gave one last, lingering look at the features of the dead;
stretched out her hand towards them, but did not touch them . . . and
then went slowly towards the door. Beside Alison she stopped.

"You are his sister?" she said.

"Yes."

She searched Alison's face, wistfully.

"I could have loved you."

"And can you not--still?"

Kate Mercy did not answer the question.

"It is because you understand," she said. "You're like those I've come
to know--here. And you're like him . . . . I don't mean in looks.
He, too, was good--and square." She spoke the words a little defiantly,
as though challenging the verdict of the world. "And he wouldn't have
been wild if he could have got going straight."

"I know," said Alison, in a low voice.

"Yes," said Kate Mercy, "you look as if you did. He thought a lot of
you, he said he was only beginning to find out what you was. I'd like
you to think as well of me as you can."

"I could not think better," Alison replied.

Kate Mercy shook her head.

"I got about as low as any woman ever got," she said

"Mr. Hodder will tell you. I want you to know that I wouldn't marry
--your brother," she hesitated over the name. "He wanted me to--he was mad
with me to night, because I wouldn't--when this happened."

She snatched her hand free from Alison's, and fled out of the room, into
the h