world now, Tom Dorgan, the real world of men and women--not the
little world of crooks, nor yet the littler one of fairy stories.
I've got a glimpse, too, of that other world where all the
scheming and lying and cheating is changed as if by magic into
something that deceives all right, but doesn't hurt. It's the
world of art and artists, Tom Dorgan, where people paint their
lies, or write them, or act them; where they lift money all right
from men's pockets, but lift their souls and their lives, too,
away from the things that trouble and bore and--and degrade.

"You needn't sneer; it's made a different Nance out of me, Tom
Dorgan. And, oh, but I'm sorry for the pert little beggar we both
knew that lied and stole and hid and ran and skulked! She was
like a poor little ignorant traveler in a great country where
she'd sized up the world from the few fool crooks she was thrown
in with. She--"

"Aw, cut it!"

"Tom--does--doesn't it mean anything to you? Can't it mean lots
to both of us now that--"

"Cut it, I tell you! Think I killed one guard and beat the other
till I'd broke every bone in his body to come here and listen to
such guff? You've been having a high old time, eh, and you never
give a thought to me up there! I might 'a' rotted in that black
hole for all you'd care, you--"

"Don't! I did, Tom; I did." I was shivering at the name, but I
couldn't bear his thinking that way of me. "I went up once, but