His body slowly relaxed, his eyes shifted, and he shrugged his square shoulders.

"What'ell did I marry you for?"

"Tell me--do you?" she demanded.

"You know that I love you. What do you ask me such a fool question for?

I love you with a love that can kill. Do you hear me? That's why you're not going anywhere without me."

There was no mistaking the depth of his passion. She trembled to realize its power and yet it was the lever by which she must move him.

"Then you've got to give this life up. You're young and brave and strong. You can earn an honest living. You haven't been in this long--I feel it, I know it. Have you?"

"No!"

"How long?"

"Eight months."

"Oh, Jim, dear, you must give it up now for my sake. I'll work with you and work for you. I'll teach, I'll sew, I'll scrub, I'll slave for you day and night--if you're only clean and honest."

He turned on her fiercely.

"Cut it, Kid--cut it! I'm out for the stuff now. I'm going to get rich and I'm going to get rich QUICK--that's all that's the matter with me!"

"But, Jim," she broke in tenderly--"you did earn an honest living. Your workshop proves that."

"I've used that to improve my tools and melt the swag the past year. The shop's all right."

"But you did make a successful invention?"

"You bet I did," he answered savagely, "and that's why I quit the business. Three years ago I took down a big automobile and worked out an improvement in the transmission that settled the question of heavy draft machines. I took it to a lawyer in Wall Street and he took it to a man that had money. Between the two of 'em, they didn't do a thing to me! They were going to put my patent on the market and make me a millionaire. God, I was crazy----"

He paused and squared his shoulders with a deep breath.

"They put it on the market all right and they made some millionaires--but I wasn't one of 'em, Kiddo! They got me to sign a paper that skinned me out of every dollar as slick as you can pull an eel through your fingers. I hired another lawyer and gave him half he could get to beat 'em. He fought like a tiger and two days before I met you he got his verdict and they paid it--just ten thousand dollars.

Think of it--ten thousand dollars! And each of them got a million cash.

They sold it outright for two millions and a half. My lawyer got five thousand dollars, and I got five thousand dollars. That's mine, anyhow.

It's in that bag there. I'm working on a new set of tools now in my shop. I'm going to get that money back from the two thieves who stole it from me by law. I'll take it by force, the way they took it. If I can croak them both in the fight--well, there'll be two thieves less to rob honest men and women, that's all."

"Oh, Jim!" Mary gasped, lifting a trembling hand to her throat as if to tear open her collar. "You're mad. You don't know what you're saying----"

"Don't fool yourself, Kiddo," he interrupted fiercely. "My eyes are open now, and I've got a level head back of 'em, too. I've doped it all out.

You ought to 'a' heard that lawyer give me a few lessons in business when he'd skinned me and salted my hide. He was good-natured and confidential. He seemed to love me. 'Business is war, sonny,' he piped, between the puffs of the big Havana cigar he was smoking--'war! war to the knife! We got you off your guard and put the knife into you at the right minute--that's all. Don't take it so hard! Invent something else and keep your eyes peeled. You ought to love us for giving you an education in business early in life. You're young. You won't have to learn your lesson again. Go to work, sonny, in your shop, and turn out another new tool for the advancement of trade!'"

He paused and smiled grimly.

"I've done it, too! I've just finished a little invention that'll crack any safe in New York in twenty minutes after I touch it."

He broke into a dry laugh, sat down and deliberately lighted a fresh cigarette.

She studied his face with beating heart. Was he lost beyond all hope of reformation? Or was this the boyish bravado of an amateur criminal poisoned by the consciousness of wrong? She tried to think. She felt the red blood pounding through her heart and beating against her brain in suffocating waves of despair.

In vivid flashes the scene of her marriage but two weeks ago, came back in tormenting memories. The solemn words she had spoken kept ringing like the throb of a funeral bell far up in the star-lit heavens----

"I, MARY ADAMS, TAKE THEE, JAMES ANTHONY, TO MY WEDDED HUSBAND, TO HAVE AND TO HOLD... FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND TO OBEY, TILL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE; AND THERETO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH."

The last solemn prayer kept ringing its deep-toned message over all----

"GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, GOD THE HOLY GHOST, BLESS, PRESERVE, AND KEEP YOU; THE LORD MERCIFULLY WITH HIS FAVOR LOOK UPON YOU, AND FILL YOU WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BENEDICTION AND GRACE; THAT YE MAY SO LIVE TOGETHER IN THIS LIFE, THAT IN THE WORLD TO COME YE MAY HAVE LIFE EVERLASTING.

AMEN."

In a sudden rush of desperate pity for herself and the man to whom she was bound, she dropped on her knees by his side, slipped her arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing.

"Oh, Jim, Jim, man," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't see you sink into hell like this! Have you no real love in your heart for the woman who has given all? Have mercy on me! Have mercy! You can't mean the hideous things you've just said! You've been crazed by your losses. You're just a boy yet. Life is all before you. You're only twenty-four. I'm just twenty-four. We can both begin anew. I've never lived until these past weeks--neither have you. You couldn't drag me down into a life of crime----"

Her head sank and her voice choked into silence. He made no movement of his hand to soothe her. His voice was not persuasive. It was hard and cold.

"I'm not asking you to help me on any of my jobs," he said. "I'm the financier of the family. You can say the prayers and keep house."

"Knowing that you are a criminal? That your hands are stained with human blood?"

"Why not?" he snapped, the blue blaze flashing again in his eyes.

"Suppose you were the wife of the gentlemanly lawyer-thief who robbed me, using the law instead of a jimmy--would you bother your little head about my business? Does his wife ask him where he got it? Does anybody know or care? He lives on Fifth Avenue now. He bought a palace up there the day after he got my money. We passed it on the way to the Park the day I met you. A line of carriages was standing in front and finely dressed women were running up the red carpet that led down the stoop and under the canopy to the curb. Did any of the gay dames who smiled and smirked at that thief's wife ask how he got the money to buy the house?

Not much. Would they have cared if they had known? They'd have called him a shrewd lawyer--that's all! Do you reckon his wife worries about such tricks of trade? Why should mine worry?"

She gripped his hand with desperate pleading.

"Oh, Jim, dear, you can't be a criminal at heart! I wouldn't have loved you if it had been true. I can't believe it! I won't believe it. You're posing. You don't mean this. You can't mean it. You're going to return every dishonest dollar that you've taken."

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

He closed his jaw with a snap and leaned close in eager, tense excitement.

"Do you know how much junk I've piled into a little box in my shop the past three months?"

"I don't care--I don't want to know!"

"You've got to care--you've got to know now! It's worth a hundred thousand dollars, do you hear? A hundred thousand dollars! It would take me a life-time to earn that on a salary. In two weeks after we get back to New York with my new invention that lawyer advised me to make, I'll go through his house--I'll open his safe, I'll take every diamond, every pearl and every scrap of stolen jewelry his wife's wearing. And I won't leave a fingerprint on the window sill. I've got two of his servants working for me.

"In six months I'll be worth half a million. In a year I'll pull off the big haul I'm planning and I'll be a millionaire. We'll retire from business then--just like they did. We'll build our marble palace down at Bay Ridge and our yacht will nod in the harbor. We'll spend our summers in Europe when we like and every snob and fool in New York will fall over himself to meet me. And every woman will envy my wife. I'm young, Kiddo, but I've cut my eye teeth. You've just been born. I'm running the business end of this thing. You think you can reform me. You can--AFTER I'VE MADE OUR PILE. I'll join the church then and sing louder than that lawyer. But if you think you're going to stop my business career at this stage of the game--forget it, forget it!"

He sprang up with a quick movement of his tense body and threw her off.

She rose and watched his restless steps as he paced the floor. Her mind was numb as if from a mortal blow. She brushed the tangled ringlets of brown hair back from her forehead, drew the handkerchief from her belt and wiped the perspiration from her brow.

Before she could gather the strength to speak, he wheeled suddenly and confronted her: