“Yes, and the pages are rather smudgy here and there, but you’ll learn to read them some day.  The office will help you, Jerry, because business people have to think straight or be repudiated.  You ought to go to the office every day and work—­work whether you like it or not.  You’ve got too much money.  It’s dangerous.  You’re like a colt just out in the pasture, all hocks and skittishness.  Work is the only thing for that.  It may be tiresome but you’ve got to stick at it if it kills you.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he muttered.

“Jerry,” she went on rapidly, and I think with a twinkle of mischief in her eye, “all of us have streaks of other people in us.  I have, lots of ’em.  Sometimes I wonder which part of me is other people and which is me.  I think you’ve even got more different kinds of people in you than I have.  Students, philosophers, woodsmen, prize fighters—­”

“Una!”

“I must.  Everything, almost everything you’ve been and done I like except—­”

“Oh, don’t Una—­”

“I’ve got to.  You wanted to clear things up between us.  That’s one of the things we’ve got to clear up.  I don’t understand the psychology of the prize ring and I’m not sure that I’d care to understand it.  I know that you are strong in body.  You should be glad of that, but not so glad as to be vain of it.  One doesn’t boast of the gifts of the gods.  One merely accepts them, thankfully—­”

“I was a fool—­”

“Say rather, merely an animated biped, an instinct on legs.  Is that a thing to be proud of—­for a man who knows what real ideals are?”

“Don’t—­”

“Did you discuss Shakespeare and the musical glasses with ‘Kid’ Spatola?”

“Please!”

“Or the incorporeal nature of the soul with Battling Sagorski?”

“Una!” Her irony was biting him like acid.

“Or did Sagorski make you an accessory before the fact of his next housebreaking expedition?”

“Una, that isn’t fair.  Sagorski is—­”

“He’s a second-story man, Jerry, with a beautiful record.  Shall I give it to you?”

“Er—­no, thanks,” gasped Jerry breathlessly.  “I can’t believe—­”

“You missed nothing at the house?”

She waited for his reply.

“I’m not sure who took them—­”

“But you did miss—?”

“Yes, spoons, forks and things—­” He broke off exasperated.  “Oh, Una, it’s cruel of you?”

“No, kind.  Sagorski is a smudgy page, Jerry.  I happened to have seen it in the records.  And there’s a woman at the Mission—­”

It was Una’s turn to pause in sudden solemnity.

“A woman.  His wife?” asked Jerry.

“No, just a woman.”

“He had treated her badly?”

“Her soul,” she replied slowly, “is dead.  Her body doesn’t matter.”

She must have been thankful for the silence that followed? for the look of bewilderment, piteous, I think, it must now have seemed to Una, was in his face again.  And before he could question further she had turned the topic.