"Whose bread you were taking to help disreputable females out of tight places."
"By Heaven, de Konski, you hit hard! Of course I knew that my cousin was in some way working for pay, but somehow I didn't realize—— Oh, Lord, a private secretary! Mixed up in political intrigues! A paid secretary!"
"Who is to defend good women from dissipated boys? Yes, that sweet and noble lady's fate is hard indeed. And the boy's mother! If good women are hard, some of them have a pretty hard time of it."
"Well, they'll soon be shut of me, and the sooner the better. As for that other poor woman, she knows how to stand by a fellow when he's knocked out of time. She—she—well, never mind about her——"
"Is she going to help you out of a tight place?"
"She would. She'd raise half for six months and the whole for three, at five per cent."
"Does she think you would accept?"
"Do you?" he returned fiercely, giving de Konski's searching look steadily back. "Am I a cur?"
The bearded face softened in a smile that was almost tender. "Poor chap!" he said, laying a hand on his shoulder, and looking with unseeing eyes across the gorge and away over the sea to the faint mountain chain rising dim and dreamlike on the horizon.
"I was in a tight place once," said the Anarchist presently. "I had been playing the fool rather more than most young asses do. So I went straight to my chief and made a clean breast of it——"