"Say, what'ell's the matter with you, anyhow? Have you gone crazy?"

"You--won't--tell me--where you bought them?" she asked slowly.

He faced her squarely and spoke with deliberate contempt:

"It's--none--of your business!"

She held his gaze with steady determination.

"That string of pearls belongs to the man who once lived in the front room of my old building in New York. He moved uptown with my landlady. A few months ago a burglar robbed and shot him----"

She stopped, seized his arm and cried with strangling horror:

"Jim! Jim! Where did you get them?"

"Now I know you've gone crazy! You don't suppose that's the only string of pearls in the world, do you? Did you count 'em? Did you weigh 'em?"

"Where did you get them?" she demanded.

"What put it into your head that that string of pearls belonged to your old boarder?"

"I saw him write the stanza of poetry on the satin lining of that case.

I've heard him recite it over and over again in his piping voice: 'Each bead a pearl--my rosary!' I KNOW that they belonged to him!"

His mouth twitched angrily and he faced her, speaking with cold, brutal frankness.

"I might keep on lying to you, Kiddo, and get away with it. But what's the use? You've got to know. It's just as well now--I did that job----Yes!"

Her face blanched.

"You--a--burglar--a murderer!"

Jim followed her with quick, angry gestures.

"All I wanted was his money! He fought--it was his life or mine----"

"A murderer!"

"I just went after his money--I tell you--besides, he didn't die; he got well. If he'd kept still he wouldn't have lost his pearls and he wouldn't have been hurt----"

"And I stood up for you against them all!" she answered in a dazed whisper. "They told me--Jane Anderson with brutal frankness, Ella with the heart-rending, timid confession of her own tragic life--they told me that you were bad. I said they were liars. I said that they envied our happiness. I believed that you were big and brave and fine. I stood by you and married you!"

She paused and looked at him steadily. In a rush of suppressed passion she seized his arm with a violence that caused his heavy eyelids to lift in amused surprise.

"Oh, Jim--it's not true! It's not true--it's not true! For God's sake, tell me that you're joking!--that you're teasing me! You can't mean it!

I won't believe it--I won't believe it!"

Her head sank until it rested piteously against his breast. He stood with his face turned awkwardly away and then moved his body until she was forced to stand erect.

He touched her shoulder gently and spoke soothingly:

"Come, now, Kid, don't take on so. I'll quit the business when I make my pile."

She drew back instinctively and he followed:

"I'll never touch another penny of yours. There's blood on it!"

"Rot!" he went on soothingly. "It's good Wall Street cash--got it exactly like they got theirs--got it because I was quicker and smarter than the fellow that had it. I use a jimmy, they use a ticker--that's all the difference."

She drew her figure to its full height.

"I'm going--Jim----"

"Where?"

His voice rasped like a file against steel.

"Home!"

"Your home's with me."

"I won't live with a thief!"

He stepped squarely before her and spoke with deliberate menace.

"You're--not--going!"

"Get out of my way!" she cried defiantly.

His big jaw closed with a snap and his figure became rigid. The candle's yellow light threw a strange glare on his face, convulsed. The blue flames of hell were in the glitter of his steel eyes.

Her heart sank in a dull wave of terror. She tried to gauge the depth of his brutal rage. There was no standard by which to measure it. She had never seen that look in his face before. His whole being was transformed by some sinister power.

She was afraid to move, but her mind was alert in this moment of supreme trial. She hadn't used her last weapon yet. The fact that he held her with such terrible determination was proof of the spell she had cast over him. She might save him. He couldn't have been a criminal long. She formed her new battle-line with quick decision.

CHAPTER XVII. THE SURRENDER

How long she gazed into the convulsed face of the man who had squared himself before her, mattered little measured by the tick of the watch in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it marked the birth of a new being within the soul of a woman. She had been searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another in the meshes of her life. Too much had been lived in the past two weeks to be undone by a word and forgotten in a day. She had attempted, coward-like, to run.

She saw now in the consuming flame of a great sorrow that the man before her had some rights which the purest woman must reckon with. He might be a burglar. At least it was her duty to try to save him from himself. Her surrender of the past weeks was a tie that would bind them through all eternity. There was no chemistry of earth or heaven or hell that could erase its memories. Her life was no longer her own--this man's was bound with hers. She must face the facts. She would make one honest, brave effort to save him. To do this she would give all without reservation--pride must be cast to the winds.

Her voice suddenly changed to tears.

"Oh, Jim, you do love me, don't you?"