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McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 6, May, 1896 by Various
page 54 of 204 (26%)
just as bad if she were a doll or a dolt. Any fellow out of
swaddling-clothes, who has brains in his body, and isn't made of wood,
ought to know that passion is as hard a fact as hunger, and no more to
be left out of account. You were bound to know the chances were that it
would have to be reckoned with, first or last, and you deliberately took
the risk of wrecking two women's lives. I don't say anything about your
own; you richly deserve all you got, and all that's coming to you. If
law could be made to conform to abstract justice, it would rank your
offence worse than many for which men pay behind bars."

He went out abruptly, and after a few minutes returned with Agnes, who
came in lingering, and apparently unwilling.

"Here, Agnes, I am going out," he said. "I've been giving this young man
my opinion of him, and haven't any more time to waste. You can tell him
what you think of him, and send him off."

He went out, and banged the door after him. Agnes leaned against it, and
stood there downcast and perfectly still. Windham sat sunk together, as
the doctor had left him, waiting for her to speak. But she did not, and
after a while he got up and stood by the high desk, looking at her.
Finally he spoke low:

"Are you going to scold me, too? Mary has discarded me, and your uncle
says I am a miserable sinner, and ought to be in the penitentiary. I
don't deny it; but if I went there it would be for your sake. Do you
condemn me, too? Have you no mercy for me?"

A flush spread slowly over her pale face. Then she replied softly:

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