“I thought I loved her with a fine, true love, but she showed me it was only a base imitation.  I offered her my youth, my strength, my future, and she would have taken them and—­broken them and scattered them in my face and—­and laughed at me.  When I found it out, I—­well, never mind, but you can bet all your pretty French philosophy I didn’t go about Paris looking for billiard players to kill on her account.”

It was not a gallant speech, but it rang true, a desperate cry from the soul depths of this unhappy man, and Pussy Wilmott shrank away as she listened.

“Then why did you quarrel with Martinez?” demanded the judge.

“Because he was interfering with a woman whom I did love and would fight for——­”

“For God’s sake, stop,” whispered the lawyer.

“I mean I would fight for her if necessary,” added the American, “but I’d fight fair, I wouldn’t shoot through any hole in a wall.”

“Then you consider your love for this other woman—­I presume you mean the girl at Notre-Dame?”

“Yes.”

“You consider your love for her a fine, pure love in contrast to the other love?”

“The other wasn’t love at all, it was passion.”

“Yet you did more for this lady through passion,” he pointed to Mrs. Wilmott, “than you have ever done for the girl through your pure love.”

“That’s not true,” cried Lloyd.  “I was a fool through passion, I’ve been something like a man through love.  I was selfish and reckless through passion, I’ve been a little unselfish and halfway decent through love.  I was a gambler and a pleasure seeker through passion, I’ve gone to work at a mean little job and stuck to it and lived on what I’ve earned—­through love.  Do you think it’s easy to give up gambling?  Try it!  Do you think it’s easy to live in a measly little room up six flights of black, smelly stairs, with no fire in winter?  Anyhow, it wasn’t easy for me, but I did it—­through love, yes, sir, pure love.”

As Hauteville listened, his frown deepened, his eyes grew harder.  “That’s all very fine,” he objected, “but if you hated this woman, why did you risk prison and—­worse, to get her things?  You knew what you were risking, I suppose?”

“Yes, I knew.”

“Why did you do it?”

Kittredge hesitated.  “I did it for—­for what she had been to me.  It meant ruin and disgrace for her and—­well, if she could ask such a thing, I could grant it.  It was like paying a debt, and—­I paid mine.”

The judge turned to Mrs. Wilmott:  “Did you know that he had ceased to love you?”

Pussy Wilmott, with her fine eyes to the floor, answered almost in a whisper:  “Yes, I knew it.”

“Do you know what he means by saying that you would have spoiled his life and—­and all that?”

“N-not exactly.”