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220 Let me tell you, my friend, I wanted to reach over and gather the girl in and kiss her. She was a little brick. Here she was, a girl who had spent two-thirds of her life in France and had her ups and downs in both countries, yet had never been smirched you had only to look at her to see that and had kept ideals.

"Look here, Rosalie," said I, "you're the best little girl in all the world, and I feel that I'm going to be a better man for having known that there really are some like you. I've only been up against one in my life, and she thinks I'm all wrong—and I don't blame her. Now it ain't included in my route-card to bring trouble to the only two really unselfish women that I ever met; so you and I are due to part immediatement. You said a minute or two ago, 'That's all you get for being famous'; so there's no kick coming if you don't recognise me when I tell you one or two of my old business names. Until a month or so ago, when I went on the level for my own good reasons, I was about as slick a thief as ever tried to collect what he thought the world owed him. The police in New York and Chicago, and London and Frankfort—and even 'way off there in St. Louis, where they love a thief until he's pinched almost as much as they do here in Paris—would feel real broken up if they knew I'd chucked graft. Maybe you never heard of Frank Clamart, alias the 'Tide-water Clam,' alias 'The Swell,' alias 'Sir Frankie,' and a few others?"

Rosalie looked embarrassed.

"No," says she. "I never had a chance to see