But as he held up his hand and swore that the identity of the corpse was
such and such, he remembered how graceful she had been at sixteen, how
affectionate, how ready to forgive. He remembered with a certain
admiration that during the heyday of her earning powers she had always
trusted to his generosity, and had never tried to hold any of her
earnings back. Prison and drink had destroyed all that was honest in
her, all that was womanly. So a drop of acid will eat out the heart of
the freshest and loveliest rose. She became a very evil thing--full of
evil knowledge. There was even a certain danger in her--not
much--nothing definite--but enough. She was better dead.

He turned and swung out of the morgue into the sunlight. And he wondered
whatever had become of the child that she had borne him.




V


It would have been easier for Wilmot Allen if he could have come into
Barbara's life for the first time. She was too used to him to appreciate
such of his qualities as were fine and noble at their true value. And
contrarily it was the same familiarity which limned his faults so
clearly and perhaps exaggerated them. She often thought that if she
could see him for the first time she would fall head over ears in love
with him, and be married to him out of hand. Was it not better
therefore, since the man's character had its disillusionments, that
their life-long friendship precluded the idea of marrying in haste and