“Oh, you were?” His eyes flamed so furiously that she turned her gaze from him.

“And now I feel better, for I have confided in you and you’re going to be my good and true friend from now on.  It will be made up to you, Dicky.”

“What had you done with all that money you took from Dalton & Company?”

“It costs so much to live—­and keep up the position I had when Andrew was alive!  A woman needs so many things, Richard.  I have always been proud.  I was obliged to—­”

He swore and swung away from her.  “Wasted it on dress and jewelry!  You turned the trick on one man and put him underground.  And I’m the next victim!  I knew I was being played for a sucker, but, oh—­”

He battered his fists against the wall in pure ecstasy of rage.  Then he sat down and put his face in his hands.

The woman clucked sobs which did not ring true.

“I wonder what Kate would say if she knew how I had come to the scratch.  She knew her father was a hero.  I wonder whether she would think I am one!” he said, after silence had continued for a long time.

“Are you going to tell her?” the mother gasped.

“I love her too much.  But, see here!  Do you think I picked that five thousand off a rose-bush?”

“You told me your uncle loaned it to you.”

“You think I got it easy—­got it for the asking, and that’s why you have been loafing on the job,” he said, with bitterness.  “Ask my uncle for money?  I should say not.  He never loosened for anybody yet—­not even his relatives.  Mrs. Kilgour, I love your daughter so much—­I was so anxious to help you—­I stole that five thousand from the state treasury.  I have been covering it in my accounts for more than a year—­hell all the time with plenty of white-hot when the legislative committee has been over the accounts.  Some day some blasted fool will wake up enough to see that there’s a hole in my figures.”

He put his elbows on his knees and stared at the carpet.  The woman’s face grew white.

“That’s how it stands with me, Mrs. Kilgour.  You know you were not square with me at the start.  You said you needed the money for only a few weeks—­you said you were pinched in a stock deal.  You lied to me.  You have wasted the money on fine feathers for your back.  I have kept still.  You can’t pay me.  I’ve got to struggle out of the mess as best I can.  But, by the eternal gods, there’s something coming to me, and that’s your daughter.  Now are you going to wake up?”

“I’ll do everything I can.”  Her tone was not convincing, however.

He realized that this woman with the pulpy conscience and the artificial emotions, selfish and a coward, was merely vaguely stirred by his revelation, not spurred by the extent of his sacrifice in her behalf.

“Do what you can?  Whine to me like that after I have stolen state’s money and am standing under my steal?  What if this state tips over politically and they investigate the treasury?  I tell you, Mrs. Kilgour, I deserve to have Kate.  I’m going to have her.  You have got to fix it—­and right away.”