"Je suis aussi sans désir
Autre que d'en bien finir—
Sans regret, sans repentir,
Sans espoir ni crainte—"
"Without regret, without repentance—Repentance? Surely! But—without regret? He asked a good deal, that lad! You ought to like my little song—it was taught me by the erudite Christina."
"Where's that woman, now?"
"Ah!" said Denny, "that's her secret."
"And Christina?" said Herrick, again.
"Christina and I are very old chums; aside from the Deutches I am the oldest friend she has. It was I got Wheeler to go West and see her. I was in the first company she ever joined, when she was just a tall, slim kid—sixteen, I think—and I was twenty-six. We've worked together, and won together and—gone without together. I had been at it for eight years when she first went on; and I taught her all I knew; when I got into the moving pictures for a summer I worked her in—"
Herrick started. "The best friend Christina ever had!" he exclaimed.
"Oh!" said the other. "Thank you!" Herrick was aware of his quaint smile. "Yes, I suppose I might be called that!"
"I was told—I was led to believe you were an older man."
"Ah, that's one of Christina's sweetest traits—she colors things so prettily! She can't help it! But you see, now, don't you, that she'd never give me away? Chris would shield her friends as long as she had breath for a lie. She's pretended a quarrel with me all these weeks, because, thinking the police were following her, she didn't want them to find me. She's kept you from knowing people who might speak of me. She's had but the one thought since the beginning; and that was to save my life. But she's in love with you, and she can't lie to you any longer—you'll see. Besides, she thinks she can make you our accomplice; that because you're a friend of hers, you're a friend of mine. She has still her innocences, you see, and, in the drama, so many lovers behave so handsomely." The ring had died out of his voice; but he went on, with a kind of rueful amusement, spurring himself to be persuasive, "Come, now, stop thinking of what would influence you, and try to think of what would influence Chris! Do you think she'd like to see Wheeler hanged?"