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 he was being drawn. He even had a sense that he was not going to be allowed any increased issue of moral stock on the ground of telling this woman the truth. He was going to tell her the truth because he had to, because she hypnotized it out of him.

"I say," he began, and stopped to wet his lips, but found his tongue so furred that it could not function in that behalf. "I say," he went on again, croaking hoarsely, "that I am the thief."

"You? The banker?"

Rollie fell to wondering how blue vitriol bites. Certainly it could not be more biting than the sarcasm in look and tone with which the woman had asked this question.

"Yes, I—"

The young man was going to prepare the soil for throwing himself upon her mercy—this woman whom he was now positive knew no such thing as mercy—by telling her about his defalcation; but in the wooden state of his mind, one quivering gleam of intelligence suggested that it was quite unnecessary to tell her anything about his defalcation; that it might give her an added set of pincers for the torture she might choose to inflict.

"Yes, I stole them," he affirmed doggedly. "And I am going to bring them back."

"Going to?" she asked, again making the fine shade of her meaning clear with the slightest expenditure of sound.

"Yes, a little accident happened."

"An accident!" The woman's eyes blazed, her cheeks were aflame, and her whole attitude expressive of menace. "You didn't lose them?"

"I only lost control of them for a few hours through a bit of stupidity," he confessed, and hurried on to explain: "For safe keeping this morning I locked them