"Well?" said Redding.

Lucy evidently found it difficult to continue. "They said some
horrid things then, just because you were Dick's friend."

"What were they, Lucy?"

"They told me that you were both as wild as could be; that your
reputation was no better than his; that--forgive me, Robert, for
even repeating it. It made me very angry, and I told them it was not
true--not a word of it; that it was all Dick's fault; that he--"

"Lucy," interrupted Redding, peremptorily, "wait until you hear me!
I have never lied to you about anything, and I will not stoop to it
now. Four years ago, when those people knew me, I was just what they
said. Dick Harris and I went to New Orleans straight from college.
Neither of us had a home or people to care about us, so we went in
for a good time. At the end of the year I was sick of it all, braced
up, and came here. Poor Dick, he kept on."

At his first words the color had left Lucy's face, and she had
slipped to the opposite side of the fire, and stood watching him
with horrified eyes.

"But you were never like Dick!" she protested.

"Yes," he continued passionately, "and but for God's help I should
be like him still. It was an awful pull, and Heaven only knows how I
struggled. I never quite saw the use of it all, until I met you six
months ago; then I realized that the past four years had been given