“I haven’t forgotten the name of your little nurse-friend, yet, doc,” it said, “for I have a curious presentiment, in some way, that some sorrow will come to me through Miss Marion Marlowe!”
“As queer as ever—queerer, perhaps,” muttered Dr. Brookes as he finished the letter.
Then as he went about his work in the meagerly furnished wards he found himself wondering if Greenaway was going crazy.
“What a fool to throw himself away on a woman like that!” he said aloud. The next instant he noticed with embarrassment that “Big Belle” had heard him.
“By Jove!” thought the doctor, suddenly, “I am going to talk to this woman. Prison rules be hanged! She is a human being, and if any one knows the world this woman knows it.”
He turned toward her instantly—there was no one within hearing.
“Belle,” he said, quietly, “tell me something of your life. I want to know your motive for being dishonest.”
The woman stared at him a moment, and then smiled broadly. There was a vestige of her old shrewdness in the way she answered him.
“I have never been proven dishonest,” she said, quietly. “I came up this time on the strength of my reputation, but, granted that I am dishonest, this is my only motive, I wish to hold my own in the struggle of life—I am what you might call a rabid believer in the ‘survival of the fittest.’”