similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime
gained an immediate ascendency--since then he had insisted that this
particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind
leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him--would she remain
desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his
affairs, a scandal of this kind would be fatal.

"I didn't know," he said desperately, "I couldn't guess. Do you think I
would have had this thing happen to you? I was carried away--we were both
carried away--"

"You planned it!" she replied vehemently, without looking up. "You didn't
care for me, you only--wanted me."

"That isn't so--I swear that isn't so. I loved you I love you."

"Oh, do you think I believe that?" she exclaimed.

"I swear it--I'll prove it!" he protested. Still under the influence of
an acute anxiety, he was finding it difficult to gather his wits, to
present his case. "When you left me that day the strike began--when you
left me without giving me a chance--you'll never know how that hurt me."

"You'll never know how it hurt me!" she interrupted.

"Then why, in God's name, did you do it? I wasn't myself, then, you ought
to have seen that. And when I heard from Caldwell here that you'd joined
those anarchists--"

"They're no worse than you are--they only want what you've got," she