ld go
away south with Christine, and could live on five or six hundred dollars
a year; then he'd be fit for something. He could go to work. He could
join the Militia, if necessary. Anyhow, he could get something to do
when he got well.

He drank some more whiskey and milk. "Self-preservation, that's the
thing; that's the first law," he said. "And more: if the only girl I
ever loved, ever really loved--loved from the crown of her head to the
sole of her feet--were here to-day, and Christine stood beside her,
little plebeian with a big heart, by Heaven, I'd choose Christine. I can
trust her, though she is a little liar. She loves, and she'll stick;
and she's true where she loves. Yes; if all the women in the world stood
beside Christine this morning, I'd look them all over, from duchess to
danseuse, and I'd say, 'Christine Lavilette, I'm a scoundrel. I haven't
a penny in the world. I'm a thief; a thief who believes in you. You know
what love is; you know what fidelity is. No matter what I did, you would
stand by me to the end. To the last day of my life, I'll give you my
heart and my hand; and as you are faithful to me, so I will be faithful
to you, so help me God!'

"I don't believe I ever could have run straight in life. I couldn't have
been more than four years old when I stole the peaches from my mother's
dressing-table; and I lied just as coolly then as I could now. I made
love to a girl when I was ten years old." He laughed to himself at the
remembrance. "Her father had a foundry. She used to wear a red dress,
I remember, and her hair was brown. She sang like a little lark. I was
half mad about her; and yet I knew that I didn't really love her. Still,
I told her that I did. I suppose it was the cursed falseness of my whole
nature. I know that whenever I have said most, and felt most, something
in me kept saying all the time: 'You're lying, you're lying, you're
lying!' Was I born a liar?

"I wonder if the first words I ever spoke were a lie? I wonder, when
I kissed my mother first, and knew that I was kissing her, if the same
little devil that sits up in my head now, said then: 'You're lying,
you're lying, you're lying.' It has said so enough times since. I loved
to be with my mother; yet I never felt, even when she died--and God
knows I felt bad enough then!

"I never felt that my love was all real. It had some infernal note of
falseness somewhere, some miserable, hollow place where the sound of my
own voice, w