“Yes, countess.”
“When the sinner, moved by the exhortations of the revivalist, goes down in front and falls upon his knees and is converted, that sinner becomes a changed being. All the black past is forgotten. Redemption has been found. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I am that sinner. All that has gone before in my checkered life could be forever forgotten, and my soul might be saved—with that key to the gate of content which you could hold out to me—if you would.”
“Countess, I——”
“And you and I together—ah, what could we not accomplish? You in your profession, and I helping you, assisting you, working for you and with you! Think of it! Think of the perfection of it! The beauty of it! But—the gate is closed and locked.”
“The gate is closed and locked,” he replied soberly.
“And yet, Nick Carter, I am a good woman. You doubt it, but it is true. I have not been good perhaps in the little things of life, but in the great ones I have been so. No man lives who can point his finger at me in scorn; no man who is dead might have ever done so. I have never committed a crime in my life, or abetted one, although I have been accused of many crimes.”
“And yet, countess——”
“Ah!” she interrupted him. “I know what you would say. You would charge me with things that the chief of police in Paris told you about. You would say that I had lured men to their death. It is not true. You would say that men have killed themselves because of me. It is not true in so far as it was a studied fault of mine, or that I led them to it, or was willfully responsible for it.