“Why, from the wickedness,” I replied, “that I have been the means of revealing to you in the bottomless depths of Miss Moonbeam’s heart.”

He blew away the hair from before his lips.

“But I shouldn’t have been marrying her wickedness,” he said. “I should have been marrying herself.”

“Herself?” I cried. “But you don’t mean to tell me that you were attached to her as a female?”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Intensely. I was intensely attached to her as a female.”

“But then, if you had married her,” I said, “it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice.”

“How do you know?” he said. “How do you know it wouldn’t?”

“Why, because you’d have liked it,” I said. “You’d have liked marrying her.”

“Well, of course,” he replied. “And some people like sacrificing.”

“But, my dear Mr. Stool,” I began, “now that her wickedness has been revealed to you——”