ou got sick of it after a bit, and decided to cut and run,
you could do it. I'd see that you were well treated--for the rest of
your life."

She studied him long and earnestly. "Say, are _you_ crazy?"

"I'm all on edge, if that's what you mean. But there's nothing for you
to be afraid of. I shan't do you any harm at any time."

"You only want to do harm to yourself. I'd be like the awful kind o'
pill which a fellow'll swaller to commit suicide." She rose, not
without a dignity of her own. "Well, mister, if I'm your fourth, I
guess you'll have to look about you for a fifth."

"Where are you going?"

He asked the question without rising. She answered as if her choice of
objectives was large.

"Oh, anywheres."

"Which means nowhere, doesn't it?"

"Oh, not exactly. It means--it means--the first place I fetch up."

"The first place you fetch up may be the police-station, if the things
you said just now are true."

"The police-station is safe, anyways."

"And you think the place I'd take you to wouldn't be. Well, you're
wrong. It'll be as safe as a church for as long as you like to stay;
and when you want to go--lots of money to go with."

Facing away from him toward the city, she said over her shoulder:
"There's things money couldn't pay you for. Bein' looked down on is
one."

She was about to walk on, but he sprang after her, catching her by the
sleeve.

"Look here! Be a sport. You've got the chance of your lifetime. It'll
mean no more to you than a part they'd give you in pictures--just a
role--and pay you a lot better."

She was not blind to the advantages he laid before her. True, it might
be what she qualified as "bull" to get her into a trap; only she
didn't believe it. This man with the sick mind and anguished face was
none of the soft-spoken fiends whose business it is to ensnare young
girls. She knew all about them from living with Judson Flack, and
couldn't be mistaken. This fellow might be crazy, but he was what he
said. If he said he wouldn't do her any harm, he wouldn't. If he said
he would pay her well, he would. The main question was as to whether
or not, just for the sake of getting something to eat and a place to
sleep, she could deliberately put herself in a position in which the
man who had married her would have gone to the devil _because_ he had
married her.

As he held her by the sleeve looking down at her, and she, half
turned, was looking up at him, this was the battle she was fi