clear voice, "I will tell you why--although, perhaps, it is only a
part of that confidence you command me to withhold. When I first
saw you, I myself had fallen into like dissolute habits; less
excusable than he, for I had some experience of the world and its
follies. When I met YOU, and fell under the influence of your
pure, simple, and healthy life; when I saw that isolation,
monotony, misunderstanding, even the sense of superiority to one's
surroundings could be lived down and triumphed over, without vulgar
distractions or pitiful ambitions; when I learned to love you--hear
me out, Miss Culpepper, I beg you--you saved ME--I, who was nothing
to you, even as I honestly believe you will still save your
brother, whom you love."

"How do you know I didn't RUIN him?" she said, turning upon him
bitterly. "How do you know that it wasn't to get rid of OUR
monotony, OUR solitude that I drove him to this vulgar distraction,
this pitiful--yes, you were right--pitiful ambition?"

"Because it isn't your real nature," he said quietly.

"My real nature," she repeated with a half savage vehemence that
seemed to be goaded from her by his very gentleness, "my real
nature! What did HE--what do YOU know of it?--My real nature!--
I'll tell you what it was," she went on passionately. "It was to
be revenged on you all for your cruelty, your heartlessness, your
wickedness to me and mine in the past. It was to pay you off for
your slanders of my dead father--for the selfishness that left me
and Jim alone with his dead body on the Marsh. That was what sent
me to Logport--to get even with you--to--to fool and flaunt you!
There, you have it now! And now that God has punished me for it by