that is enough."

She looked him in the eyes trustingly and he blinked a little.

"Plucky!" he murmured. "They're trying to queer me and maybe they will,
but I'm not going to lie about it. Listen. I came to Paris a year ago on
account of a certain person. I thought I loved her and--I made a fool of
myself. I gave up a good position in New York and--after I had been here a
while I went broke. So I gambled. It's pretty bad--I don't defend myself,
only there's one thing I want you to know. This person was not a low woman,
she was a lady."

"Huh!" grunted Mother Bonneton. "A lady! The kind of a lady who dines alone
with gay young gentlemen in private rooms! Aha, we have the facts!"

The young man's eyes kindled. "No matter where she dined, I say she was a
lady, and the proof of it is I--I wanted her to get a divorce and--and
marry me."

"Oh!" winced Alice.

"You see what he is," triumphed the sacristan's wife, "running after a
married woman."

But Kittredge went on doggedly: "You've got to hear the rest now. One day
something happened that--that made me realize what an idiot I had been.
When I say this person was a lady I'm not denying that she raised the devil
with me. She did that good and plenty, so at last I decided to break away
and I did. It wasn't exactly a path of roses for me those weeks, but I
stuck to it, because--because I had some one to help me," he paused and