Rhoda Gray dropped her chin in her grime-smeared hand, staring
speculatively at the other. The man sat there, apparently a
self-confessed crook and criminal, but, also, he sat there as the
man to whom she owed the fact that at the present moment she was
not behind prison bars. He proclaimed himself in the same breath
both a thief and a gentleman, as far as she could make out. They
were characteristics which, until now, she had never associated
together; but now, curiously enough, they did not seem so utterly
at variance. Of course they were at variance, must of necessity
be so; but in the personality of this man the incongruity seemed
somehow lost. Perhaps it was a sense of gratitude toward him that
modified her views. He looked a gentleman. There was something
about him that appealed. The gray eyes seemed full of cool,
confident, self-possession; and, quiet as his manner was, she
sensed a latent dynamic something lurking near the surface all the
time - that she was conscious she would much prefer to have enlisted
on her behalf than against her. The strong, firm chin bore this out.
He was not handsome, but - with a sort of mental jerk, she forced
her mind back to the stark realities of her surroundings. She could
not thank him for what he had done last night. She could not tell
him that she was the White Moll. She could only play out the role
of Gypsy Nan until - until - Her hand tightened with a fierce,
involuntary pressure upon her chin until it brought a physical hurt.
Until what? God alone knew what the end of this miserable,
impossible horror, in which she found herself engulfed, would be!

Her eyes sought his face again. The Adventurer was tactfully
engaged in carefully smoothing out the fingers of his yellow gloves.
Thief and gentleman, whatever he might be, whatever he might choose
to call himself, what, exactly, was it that had brought him here