The Closing Net. Henry Cottrell Rowland

were in the little pagoda I told her the whole story. Léontine listened in silence.

      ". … So you see," I finished, "my word is passed and I'm going to make good. I've done with everything belonging to the old life."

      Léontine began to trace figures in the dust with the loop of her riding crop. Presently she said:

      "And are you content to give up your freedom as tamely as this?"

      "I gave it up," said I, "when I tackled that agent to keep the rest of you from getting pinched."

      She looked at me quickly and her eyes darkened.

      "Ah, that was splendid," says she, "—that was glorious. Oh, Frank, nobody will ever know what I suffered that night. If Ivan and Chu-Chu had not held me fast I would have leaped out of the car and shot that policeman. When they got me home I was like a mad woman. They locked me in my room and ​the girls never left me for two days. Because I knew that it was all my fault. I spoiled everything. But," she gave me a burning look, "I never imagined that it could be as bad as this."

      "You've never done time in a French penal colony," said I. "This is good enough for me."

      Léontine stamped her booted foot.

      "Then it's not good enough for me," she cried, in a hot voice. "If you think that I am going to give you up like this, you are mistaken, Frank."

      I did not answer. She looked at me and her eyes filled.

      "You told me that night that you loved me," she whispered, "and my heart leaped to meet yours. I have never loved a man before, Frank. The minute that our hands touched and I looked into your cold, grey eyes I knew that I had found my mate and my master. You belong to me, Frank, and to my world. Society is our enemy. Why should you go hat in hand and ask to be taken back? Listen, Frank. Find out how much your half-brother paid to get you clear. Then we will pay it back. I am rich, just now. Afterwards, if you like, we will go away——"

      I raised my hand. "Thank you, my dear," I said gently; "but it can't be done. My word is passed. The money is only a part of the debt. The good faith, the warmth of heart and voluntary good will are things that I can only repay by being worth them—and, so help me, I intend to."

      A dark flush came into Léontine's face. She looked at me fixedly for a moment, then began again to trace patterns in the dust. Finally she said:

      ​"Suppose that you had not been caught—that I had not been such a fool as to insist on going upstairs after the pearls—what would you have done? Did you really care for me, or was it just the madness of the moment? Did you really intend to win me?" She fastened me with those wonderful eyes of hers.

      "I meant to win you," I answered. "Nothing would have kept me from it. I was mad about your beauty, it's true; but there was something else besides——" I stopped.

      "What, Frank?" she asked, softly, and laid her hand on my shoulder, leaning toward me until her flushed face was almost against mine.

      I gave a short laugh. "It sounds like a foolish thing for a professional thief to say, Léontine," I answered, "but it was because I felt the good in you."

      Léontine's eyes opened wide.

      "You are the first man to feel that," she answered.

      "It is there," I answered; "tons of it. You have plenty of heart, my dear, and a great big generous soul. I don't know anything about you, but I know that you are not bad. Not by a long shot."

      "I am a thief," she flashed back. "A thief on a bigger scale than you ever dreamed of, mon ami."

      "And I am a thief no longer," I answered.

      "But if you were——?"

      "If I were——" I hesitated. The fascination of her was beginning to turn my head, as it had that night. "If I were—then all hell could never keep you from me," I cried, and reached for her with both arms.

      ​For a few mad seconds everything was blurred. Then I pushed her away. Her arms still clung, but I was the stronger. She reeled back against the rustic rail and pressed her hands against her temples.

      "But I'm not," I muttered, and stepped away. "As long as my half-brother and his angel of a wife continue to believe in me I shall never break faith—and this is good-by, Léontine."

      She looked at me with a curious expression in her tawny eyes.

      "And if they should lose their faith in you?" she asked.

      I shrugged. "It's my business to see that they never do," I answered.

      Léontine gave me a curious smile. "We'll see, Frank," said she, softly. "Once a thief, always a thief. It's in the blood."

      Suddenly she turned and walked down the path and disappeared behind the heavy foliage.

      That afternoon John took me up to see the new car that he was promoting. The company planned to make only big fellows. One of their six-cylinders was in the garage and we took her out for a spin over the road. We made the run to Chartres in about fifty minutes, John driving. The chief mécanicien was with us and his son, a bright youngster of eighteen, named Gustave.

      On the way home we stopped at the Automobile Club for a business talk with three members of the company with whom John had made a rendezvous: a Swiss engineer, the General Director and the General Superintendent. It was arranged that I should take charge of the Paris office, my principal duty ​being to show the car to clients. After the others had gone John and I remained to talk, and I noticed that in the course of our conversation he took several drinks of whisky and soda. He was in that state of buoyancy about the new venture that you find so often in the rich amateur whose only knowledge of business comes from buying things instead of trying to sell them. He told me that he had always been very sore at his dependence on his wife for every cent he spent and that he soon hoped to be a rich man on his own account. He hinted to me that he had several things in hand from which he expected big results, and that if all went as it should he would be able to back his automobile venture with a couple of million francs. But he didn't tell me what there was to warrant these expectations, and I rather suspected that he was playing the stock market. I noticed that with every drink he got a little more sanguine, and as his spirit went up my own went down. To tell the truth, I began to fear that a good many of John's big ideas came out of the whisky bottle.

      That night at dinner John was very jolly and talkative at first, but toward the end his good-nature passed off, and I could see that the reaction was setting in. John did not impress me as a drinking man. His methods were more those of a person who is bothered about something and hits the bottle to drown care.

      After dinner Edith and Miss Dalghren went out to the studio, as Edith wanted to study the effects of artificial light on the portrait. John and I went into the smoking-room, and I noticed that he took three cups of strong black coffee.

      ​I said good-night early, for the ride had made me sleepy. While I was undressing there came a rap at the door, and the maître d'hôtel handed me a tray with a letter addressed in Léontine's hand, which was of the round, English sort.

      "Confound the girl," I said to myself, "here's more trouble." I sat down at a little writing desk and opened the letter. There were fathoms and fathoms of it; a regular essay.

      She began by telling me that since our meeting at Bagatelle she had been thinking constantly of the step which I had taken, and had decided to write and tell me the result of her reflections. She had also, she said, been analysing the state of her sentiments toward me (I could imagine her doing that as much as I could imagine a small boy analysing the effect of a match held to a heap of loose powder), and she had found that she loved me enough to give me up and to help me in my new resolutions, provided she could manage to persuade herself, or be persuaded, that such an act on my part was rational. So far, however, my reform under the existing conditions impressed her as fore-doomed to failure, and could result only in unhappiness to me and social injury to those who had befriended me. At present, said