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 that gasped at every sentence, shuddered at every disclosure. It was the coup d'etat of the defense! the staggering blow reserved to overwhelm Jerome and his allies. What a story it was that the poor little victim of a sybaritic brute told! What a tale of Nero's time it seemed to be! Tiberius and Caligula planned dens and stage settings such as Evelyn Nesbit described in the haunts of Stanford White. Did Tiberius and Caligula ever plan darker, more foul conspiracies against helpless little girls than the plots of the great architect seemed to have been? And with the telling of the heart-rending story came new thoughts, new lights upon the shadowy life of the man who died before the pistol of Harry Thaw.

No one ever denied that Stanford White, no matter what he may have been, was a generous giver, a good Samaritan in the time of need. He supported Evelyn, her mother, and her brother, in royal fashion.

What was to be deduced from the largess of White, both to the Nesbits and to scores of others?

Was the licentious architect a Jekyll and a Hyde?

Or did the weight of remorse and gloomy shame bear down upon this strangest of men in such degree that he strove mightily to salve his conscience and his bitter memories?

Or was White "a bookkeeper with the Fates"—a man who tried ever to balance the accounts of good and bad, so that the final reckoning might find his ledgers balanced? There are many men who keep