"Why did you run away?"
"Just before she died she asked me to take some money she had and to keep it safe. I hid it and ran away because I was afraid that they'd find it and take it away from me. I went to Stockton and carried the package to a bank, but they frightened me with their questions and I ran away without any explanations. Of course it's lost, and it was, as I remember it, a big sum, some thousands. I could never prove that I left it there, for my name wasn't on the package of bills. I had written some false name—I forget what. I never let any one know that I had lived with Madam Grant, after that, for fear that I should be accused of having stolen the money. My story would never have been believed, of course."
"I see." Clytie's eyes half closed in thought. "I'm sure it was meant for you, Francis."
The sound of his name stirred him and his hand tightened on hers.
"Perhaps so. But I've always thought that she intended it for some of her kin. It has been impossible for me to trace any of her family, though. All I know about her is that she was at Vassar College, but I can't possibly identify her, because Grant was undoubtedly a name she assumed here."
"We must try to see what we can do, you and I. Perhaps I may be able to help you, somehow. What happened after that?"
"I worked at odd jobs in the country for a number of years, then came back to San Francisco. There I did anything I could get to do till I met Madam Spoll. She was a medium, and is yet. I lived with her several years."
As he had torn down the draperies of that dark, mysterious room, he went on, now, to tear down the curtain of shams and hypocrisies that had hidden his true self from her and from her kind.
"That was the beginning of a long education in trickery. I was surrounded by charlatans and impostors, I was taught that the public was gullible and that it liked to be fooled—that it would be fooled, whether we did it or not; and that we might benefit by its credulity as well as any one else. There was sophistry enough, God knows, in their miserable philosophy, but I was young and was for a while taken in by it. I had no other teachers; I had only the example of the colony of fakirs about me. I saw our victims comforted and encouraged by the mental bread-pills we fed them. So we played on their weakness and vanity without scruple. I learned rapidly. I was cleverer than my teachers; I went far ahead of them. I invented new tricks and methods. But it was too easy. There was scarcely any need of subtlety or finesse. The most primitive methods sufficed. You have no idea how easily seemingly intelligent persons can be led once they are past the first turning. That was finally why I got out of it and went into palmistry. That had, at least, a basis of science, and a dignified history."
He arose again and walked to the open window. His self-consciousness was a little relieved by his interest in the analysis. He looked out, and turned back to her with a grim smile.