"Hundreds of thousands of dollars passed through my hands every
week," he resumed. "That business owed me for my care of it. It was
taking the best in me and in return was not paying what other
businesses paid for the best in other men. When a man gets thinking
that way, with a woman whom he loves as I love you--something
happens."

He paused in the bitterness of his thoughts. She moved as if to
speak. "No, no," he interrupted. "Hear me out first. All I asked was
a chance to employ a little of the money that I saw about me--not to
take it, but to employ it for a little while, a few days, perhaps
only a few hours. Money breeds money. Why should I not use some of
this idle money to pay me what I ought to have?

"When Mr. Green was away last summer I heard some inside news about
a certain stock, go it happened that I began to juggle the accounts.
It is too long a story to tell how I did it. Anybody in my position
could have done it--for a time. It would not interest you anyhow.
But I did it. The first venture was successful. Also the spending of
the money was very successful, in its way. That was the money that
took us to the fashionable hotel in Atlantic City where we met so
many people. Instead of helping me, it got me in deeper.

"When the profit from this first deal was spent there was nothing to
do but to repeat what I had done successfully before. I could not
quit now. I tried again, a little hypothecation of some bonds.
Stocks went down. I had made a bad bet and five thousand dollars was
wiped out, a whole year's salary. I tried again, and wiped out five
thousand more. I was at my wits' end. I have borrowed under