“Not at all?”

“I don’t think so. He was just the most perfect of good comrades to me—and in that way the finest gentleman I’ve ever met. Because, you know, I can see now that I gave him opportunities of being something else. Well, I was only nineteen, and——”

“Quite so. The hands, of course!”

“It seems possible to be good and bad in—in compartments, doesn’t it? That’s rather curious!”

“If true!”

“Oh, you know it’s true!”

“Perhaps I do; but I never contradict the preacher.”

She laughed again, but now a trifle fretfully.

“In his own business I believe he’s thoroughly bad.”

“Not even the chivalrous highwayman?”