From her face he knew she had grasped the danger at once; had divined it, perhaps, before he spoke.  But she only twined her arms round him and kissed his lips.  And he knew that she was begging him to put his love for her above his conscience.  Who would ever have thought that he could feel as he did to this girl who had been in the arms of many!  The stained and suffering past of a loved woman awakens in some men only chivalry; in others, more respectable, it rouses a tigerish itch, a rancorous jealousy of what in the past was given to others.  Sometimes it will do both.  When he had her in his arms he felt no remorse for killing the coarse, handsome brute who had ruined her.  He savagely rejoiced in it.  But when she laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder, turning to him her white face with the faint colour-staining on the parted lips, the cheeks, the eyelids; when her dark, wide-apart, brown eyes gazed up in the happiness of her abandonment—­he felt only tenderness and protection.

He left her at five o’clock, and had not gone two streets’ length before the memory of the little grey vagabond, screwed back in the far corner of the dock like a baited raccoon, of his dreary, creaking voice, took possession of him again; and a kind of savagery mounted in his brain against a world where one could be so tortured without having meant harm to anyone.

At the door of his lodgings Keith was getting out of a cab.  They went in together, but neither of them sat down; Keith standing with his back to the carefully shut door, Laurence with his back to the table, as if they knew there was a tug coming.  And Keith said:  “There’s room on that boat.  Go down and book your berth before they shut.  Here’s the money!”

“I’m going to stick it, Keith.”

Keith stepped forward, and put a roll of notes on the table.

“Now look here, Larry.  I’ve read the police court proceedings.  There’s nothing in that.  Out of prison, or in prison for a few weeks, it’s all the same to a night-bird of that sort.  Dismiss it from your mind—­there’s not nearly enough evidence to convict.  This gives you your chance.  Take it like a man, and make a new life for yourself.”

Laurence smiled; but the smile had a touch of madness and a touch of malice.  He took up the notes.

“Clear out, and save the honour of brother Keith.  Put them back in your pocket, Keith, or I’ll put them in the fire.  Come, take them!” And, crossing to the fire, he held them to the bars.  “Take them, or in they go!”

Keith took back the notes.

“I’ve still got some kind of honour, Keith; if I clear out I shall have none, not the rag of any, left.  It may be worth more to me than that—­I can’t tell yet—­I can’t tell.”  There was a long silence before Keith answered.  “I tell you you’re mistaken; no jury will convict.  If they did, a judge would never hang on it.  A ghoul who can rob a dead body ought