“And I am a thief.”

“You’re a damn fool, too!” exploded the trader.

“I am as God made me.”

“No.  God gives us an equal chance; but we make ourselves.  You are captain of your soul; don’t forget your Henley.  But I see now.  That poor child, trying to escape, and not knowing how.  Her father for fifteen years, and you now for the rest of her life!  Tell her you’re a thief.  Get it off your soul.”

“Add that to what she is now suffering?  It’s too late.  She would not forgive me.”

“And why should you care whether she forgave you or not?”

Spurlock jumped to his feet, the look of the damned upon his face.  “Why?  Because I love her!  Because I loved her at the start, but was too big a fool to know it!”

His own astonishment was quite equal to McClintock’s.  The latter began to heave himself up from the sand.

“Did I hear you ...” began McClintock.

“Yes!” interrupted Spurlock, savagely.  “You heard me say it!  It was inevitable.  I might have known it.  Another labyrinth in hell!”

A smile broke over the trader’s face.  It began in the eyes and spread to the lips:  warm, embracing, even fatherly.

“Man, man!  You’re coming to life.  There’s something human about you now.  Go to her and tell her.  Put your arms around her and tell her you love her.  Dear God, what a beautiful moment!”

The fire went out of Spurlock’s eyes and the shadow of hopeless weariness fell upon him.  “I can’t make you understand; I can’t make you see things as I see them.  As matters now stand, I’m only a thief, not a blackguard.  What!—­add another drop to her cup?  Who knows?  Any day they may find me.  So long as matters remain as they are, and they found me, there would be no shame for Ruth.  Can’t I make you see?”

“But I’m telling you Ruth loves you.  And her kind of love forgives everything and anything but infidelity.”

“You did not hear her when she spoke to her father; I did.”

“But she would understand you; whereas she will never understand her father.  Spurlock:  ’tis Roundhead, sure enough.  Go to her, I say, and take her in your arms, you poor benighted Ironsides!  I can’t make you see.  Man, if you tell her you love her, and later they took you away to prison, who would sit at the prison gate until your term was up?  Ruth.  Why am I here—­thirty years of loneliness?  Because I know women, the good and the bad; and because I could not have the good, I would not take the bad.  The woman I wanted was another man’s wife.  So here I am, king of all I survey, with a predilection for poker, a scorched liver, and a piano-player.  But you!  Ruth is your lawful wife.  Not to go to her is wickeder than if I had run away with my friend’s wife.  You’re a queer lad.  With your pencil you see into the hearts of all; and without your pencil you are dumb and blind.  Ruth is not another man’s wife; she is all your own, for better or for worse.  Have you thought of the monstrous lie you are adding to your theft?”