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Rh she cried. "Come—you know better than that, mon ami. Hadn't I just offered to pay back what your mushy relatives had spent on you?"

"For your own selfish purposes," I answered. "Failing in that, you thought you might as well make a little out of me in a different way."

The blood rushed into her face.

"You lie!" she cried. "You lie, and you know it!"

"Who is impolite now?" I asked. "However, it's all right. I didn't come here to bandy compliments." The criminality in the girl flashed out of her yellow eyes.

"No?" she asked. "Then what did you come for?"

"I came to get the pearls," I said, "and something tells me that I am going to succeed. If you stole them for the reason that you say, you might as well give them back. Your plan has absolutely failed. I have always played fair myself, and was fool enough to have a little sentiment about honour amongst thieves. But I know better now. This experience alone would be enough to sicken me with graft and start me on the level, even if there were no other reasons. But then, I was an American crook, and that makes a difference."

Leontine's face turned the colour of ivory—a dead, creamy white—and her eyes seemed to darken.

"You are a fool, Frank," she said, breathing hard. "You may think that your friends still believe in you, but they don't. Of course, they would pretend to,