forehead dripping, and his hands ruthlessly pounding
the back of the chair; but this straight question
stripped him suddenly of gesture and left him
standing limp and still before her, pale splotches
beginning to show on his hot cheeks.

"If you knew, why did you do it?" she repeated.
"You wrote me that my income was from dividends,
and I knew and thought nothing about it;
but if the stock which came to me was worthless,
how could it pay dividends?"

"It did not," he answered, huskily. "That
distillery stock, I tell you, isn't worth the matches to
burn it."

"But there has been no difference in my income,"
she persisted, steadily. "Why? Can you explain
that to me?"

"Yes, I can," he replied, and it seemed to her
that he spoke with a pallid and bitter desperation,
like a man driven to the wall. "I can if you
think you want to know."

"I do."

"I sent it."

"Do you mean from you own--"