Page:The traitor; a story of the fall of the invisible empire (IA traitorstoryoffa00dixo).pdf/261

 marshals arrest him dressed in the Klan costume at their meeting place."

"And now?" Steve broke in eagerly.

"I don't know what to do. I'll be frank with you, Steve—I never expected to keep my promise to marry you—I never really expected to face such a choice. There are times when I like you. There's evil in me, as there is in you—cruelty, pride, selfishness—I feel our kinship. But I don't love you, and the closer I get to you the less I love you."

"You'll learn to love me—I'I'll wait," he broke in.

"The reason why I like you less and less," she went on, "is that I feel other forces in me which are not evil—big, generous impulses, and aspirations for things beautiful and true and good that you have never felt and could never understand."

"Which some other man might develop," he snapped. "Well, play the baby act then, and give it all up."

"No, I've made up my mind to have the life of the man who took my father's. It's the one supreme passion which dominates my soul and body."

"He has confessed to you then?" Steve cried breathlessly.

"Yes."