The Tangent of a Crime

FIFTY years ago Charles Street was still fashionable. Now it is impossible. Then it signified peace and position. Now teamsters and the trolley rumble and jangle in undisputed possession. It was once, for Boston, a broad, quiet street which people loved on account of its proximity to the water. Especially were the houses on the west side preferred. There, behind plain brick fronts many a rich family lived a placid and luxurious existence. Some of those houses are left to-day, islands in the ocean of a roaring trade. Their occupants might be called prisoners of the past, marooned by tradition, memory, or habit, into inherited homes.

One of these mansions, whose back may be said to front on the Charles River Basin, had been the home of Nathaniel Morley of East India fame. The days of the old merchant princes have passed away, and have left behind them their priceless carved teak, imperial jade ornaments, silk brocades, and sandal-wood chests; their descendants maintain an unassailable dignity and social standing.

During all these years the old Morley house had undergone no change. Vandals approached to its very walls; vulgarities stared at it from the opposite side of the street; but with a stately and almost grim rigidity it held its place, a feudal landmark, unmoved by the tinsel of the times.

The only surviving members of the family were two daughters, who, like gray pigeons, held religiously to their home. The deep garden, unsuspected by casual passers-by, with its modern pergola and old-fashioned flowers, bordered by box, was the favorite restingplace of these two spinsters. There, in the gray-green spring, or in the bronzered fall, they would sit, drinking their perfumed tea, looking out upon the broad expanse of water, and gently wondering sometimes about the ever changing world to the right of the Harvard Bridge.

Isabel Morley was the elder of the two, and she must have been nearly fifty years of age. Her face was of the typical New England variety, stamped with refinement and pride in ancestry. Her smooth forehead was growing a little gray, beginning to blend into the color of her hair. Her mouth showed the lines of responsibility that are natural to a protector; and her eyes the anxiety peculiar to a duenna. Indeed, this was not to be wondered at, for ever since she could remember she had been father and mother to her younger sister Madeleine.

Isabel and Madeleine were different. Isabel was self-reliant; Madeleine was clinging. Isabel was inclining to the stoutness that overtakes many of our New England women in middle life; Madeleine was slender and girlish. Isabel still affected colors; Madeleine always dressed in gray. Isabel looked at times something like a hawk; Madeleine always like a wounded dove. Madeleine was as much shielded now from the rude contact of the world as she had been when she was a child. She was fifteen years younger than her sister, and was still treated as if she were the baby of the family. She was never allowed to go out into the street alone. The two sisters always attended their few social functions together. Every night Isabel tucked Madeleine up in bed, kissed her goodnight, and then crept softly to her own room. For hours Isabel would sit watching her younger sister silently, her heart wrung by the look of sorrow that she saw. Then she would get up, stroke Madeleine tenderly on the shoulder as one might a daughter in suffering, and sit down without a word.

The relationship between these two was as beautiful as it was inexplicable to what they called the common people. If there were any mystery in the family, which no one suspected, the girls had the good breeding to keep it to themselves. They never talked about their own affairs, nor by any accident did they allow themselves to be separated.

It was a warm June afternoon when Miss Isabel Morley proposed to her sister to make a call on Beacon Street. The air was so soft that they decided not to use their brougham, but to walk instead. Madeleine had been pale and moody during the last few days, and it troubled her sister. Madeleine came downstairs into the library slowly; she looked like a beautiful gray dove. Her pearl-colored crêpe de Chine dress clung closely to her slender figure, making her look younger than she was. She smiled up at Isabel, something mournfully, her blue eyes large with the promise to be as cheerful as she possibly could. With a sigh of relief at this silent assurance, Isabel opened the front door herself, and then shut it carefully. The air was warm and rich with life, and the two walked in it happily. They were not troubled that afternoon by the painful vulgarity of their surroundings, and yet they were glad when they reached Beacon Street and the green depth of the Common confronted them.

“Just wait here a moment, dear,” said Isabel, stopping on the corner. “I want to order something I forgot to telephone for this morning.”

She went into the druggist’s, leaving Madeleine standing on the sidewalk, entranced in the different shades of foliage opposite to her. So preoccupied was she that she did not hear a cry of voices behind her, and a clatter of feet. The sound came nearer, blending raucously with the rumble of the street. If she had turned, she would have seen the wild figure of a man leaping ahead of the pursuing crowd. But Madeleine stood absorbed, the unusual noises making no impression upon her.

Suddenly she felt herself entangled in a horrible grip, — she who had never been rudely touched before in her life. The pursued man, coming to the corner, wished to turn. Seeing the woman standing there, he used her as a pivot, and after he had given her a half swing, he leaped beyond, up the street. But Madeleine did not know the reason of the assault. She felt the clutch upon her arm and waist. Her face was scorched with the hot breath upon it. She had the instant, maidenly consciousness of having been desecrated. The attack left her faint and quivering. She reeled to the side of the building, and stood there almost sinking to the ground. With a wild cry the pursuers swept by her. Her delicate personality writhed. The horror of this invasion! The disgrace of it!

Hearing the confusion, Isabel Morley ran out and found her sister half fainting.

“ Why, Madeleine! ” she cried. “ There is blood all over your waist!”

“Oh! Get me home,” sobbed Madeleine; and then the woman swooned quite away.

There are some natures that were never meant to exist in this world at all, — natures so delicately organized and exquisitely adjusted that they wilt at a touch, like a rare orchid. This is rather a quality of physical than of spiritual organization. Such souls are doomed to go through life finding but little harmony to accord with their own. Primitive feelings, and people who are composed as if by Wagner, strike terrible discords in these supersensitive hearts. Not being able to come into contact with life, they do not tolerate it. To these natures most human manners are vulgar, and all human follies are monstrous. Weaknesses they cannot understand, and momentary aberrations from truth they will not pardon. Contact with the world often becomes to them absolute physical pain. A rude touch is torture, and may be followed by a long period of depression. Curiously enough, these sensitive beings may not carry with them a perfection corresponding to their refinement. Culture is apt to preclude power, and often includes great selfishness. Madeleine Morley had lived an unnatural existence. She was the hothouse product of her sister, who had sheltered her as carefully as one protects palms from a New England winter. Like all conservatory plants, she was forced and self-centred. To transplant her into healthy soil and growth out of doors would kill her. She knew no other life than the tropic existence that she had lived on this bleak Massachusetts water front. Mentally dependent, physically repressed, and spiritually caged, for many years Madeleine had been a pale and willing prisoner.

This was the first time that she had been spotted by the world, and she quivered with shame. For a week she had tossed upon her bed, alternating with fever and depression. She could feel that man’s hands upon her. It seemed as if the bloody mark he left upon her gray clothes could never be washed out of her mind. And then his face! Gaunt, flushed, frightened, for an instant it had bent above her. The face shadowed her. It left her neither in her waking nor in her troubled sleep. It was threatening to become a fixed impression, mutilating her future. It would seem almost impossible that the mere shock of that unhappy contact could so shake even such a delicate person. But there was something more. Madeleine had not dared to tell her sister all she felt or feared. That face which so persistently haunted her had, as it became permanently stamped on the retina of her brain, a strangely familiar look. From out of the mists of a girlish memory it seemed to rise and confront her. She tried to place it, but could not. Hour after hour Madeleine sought to solve the enigma of this fleeting impression. She knew it, and she did not know it. Just as she grasped the key, it eluded her. Just as she recognized the man, his individuality faded away.

On the eighth morning, while it was yet early, she awoke with a shriek. The face confronted her! Stripped of its ragged beard, the dreaded features had taken on a youthful and accusing look.

“Oh, my God!” she cried out. “It is he!”

Her sister Isabel rushed into the room. Madeleine was sitting straight up in bed, clasping her head.

“Isabel, do you know who that man was, who” — She stopped as if she had been stricken with ice water. Isabel’s heart was beating violently. Her body was perfectly quiet. But her eyes had the expression of one from whom a sacred trust is slipping.

“You do know!” cried Madeleine breathlessly. “It was Willard Winch!”

“Yes,” answered Isabel, speaking distinctly, like a metronome. “I knew it all the time.”

Eighteen years ago Madeleine Morley had a lover. She had seen him for the first time upon the parade ground. Willard Winch was then the colonel of his Latin School regiment. He was tall, military, handsome, fascinating. Without an introduction, and without knowing who he was, Madeleine became entranced by him. She had been of the dreamy, sentimental sort that keeps a notebook, the distorted mirror of one’s own feelings; one of the girls who write love poetry at midnight, and hide it away in a locked escritoire. Her infatuation became a misery. In self-defense Isabel had to compass an introduction to this young man, and afford Madeleine the opportunity of her dreams. As might have been expected, the result was volcanic. The lava of their natures met and fused; and in a month’s time the young people were engaged.

While these two were alike in the artless and unreserved expression of their passion, first love had a very different effect upon each of them. To Madeleine, Willard had become life. To the freshman at Harvard, the engagement was an iridescent dream. Willard would have felt the same if he had been engaged to any other girl; but for Madeleine no other man existed. While she gave him the exclusive worship of a consecrated nature, he accepted her with the sensuous joy that an irresponsible character may feel.

More women than we suspect have the temperament of nuns. Some devote themselves to God; others to man; in either case it is worship. Upon her knees, Madeleine burned incense before this creature of her imagination. And, without his realizing it, her supreme devotion began to have a transforming effect upon Willard Winch. He now dreamed better things without doing them. He might have ended by being noble without the dissipating effect of reverie, had not something occurred which changed the whole current of his life. At that time he considered it a minor incident. But later, he saw that it was the parting of the ways.

As I said, Madeleine Morley, then about eighteen years of age, looked upon her handsome lover as a god. The divinity could do no wrong, and was to be treated accordingly. But one day Willard lied to her. It was an unintelligent, a foolish lie, and easily detected. But that lie disrupted the girl’s trust. Before it was uttered, there was hardly a thing in the universe in which she did not have faith, — so simple and unsophisticated, so ignorant and single-minded was she. After that false word was uttered, her nature was as changed as a glass of clear water in which you drop an ounce of ink. Her faith in people was gone; her belief in God and humanity was shattered. And most of all she distrusted Willard Winch.

“You lied to me!” she blazed, white with indignation. “I trusted you, and you deceived me. There was no need of it. I never can believe in you again, — no, don’t touch me. I wish you to go.”

She swept the words of remonstrance, of protestation, of explanation, of apology, out of his mouth.

The young man had not commanded his battalions in vain, nor had he earned his popularity without acquiring some dignity.

“Very well, then,” he said, standing to his superb height, and looking to her, in spite of herself, handsomer than he had ever seemed before, “if I go now, I will never come back again, and you have ruined my life.”

They were both children, — she full of ignorance, and he of outraged pride, — and the girl let him go. From that hour until the fatal morning a week ago she had not seen his face. But she had heard of him occasionally, and knew that he was a ruined man. With all his mad recklessness in college, he had kept much of his popularity. But he had gone down hill fast, becoming a sort of gentleman confidence man ; and later, stories were told of crimes that had been laid at his door.

This was Madeleine Morley’s belief,— that she had sent him to the devil. She had no doubt of it whatever. During all these years she had never ceased wishing that he would come back to her. In spite of her conventual existence, she had seen enough of the world to know that the way in which she had dismissed her lover was a far graver fault than the petty lie that he had told. When she might have saved, she had lost him, — to himself, as well as to her. When she might have been his angel, she had been his curse.

Ah, she would have gone down on her knees to that man, no matter how degraded, how debased, he might be, and asked his pardon for her youthful folly! How often had she dreamed of his coming back to her, of her penitence, of his forgiveness, — of her favor, — but not like this.

Isabel Morley sat down upon the bed, took her sister’s hand, and held it tightly. She was trying to steady herself before the struggle that was at hand. She had always controlled the woman whose soul lay bare before her. Could she do so now ? Her eyes were brimming with compassion, but they did not falter before her sister’s fierce look.

“You knew it all the time!” cried the younger, “and you let me lie here like this! How could you?” She tried to wrench her hand away, but failed.

“I read it,” Isabel spoke with great precision, “in the Transcript. Willard Winch is in the Charles Street Jail. There were three men in the barroom on the next corner from our house; you know the place. One of them is dead. Another escaped. Willard Winch was caught, and they accuse him of the murder. I would have given my life to keep this away from you. I did n’t know who it was at the time, but after I read the paper I knew that it must have been he.”

This time Madeleine did snatch her fingers away. She dashed the clothes aside.

“ I am going to dress,” she said, passing her hand through her hair in a wild way. “There is not a minute to lose.”

“Madeleine! Madeleine! What are you going to do?”

Madeleine looked at her sister imperiously.

“I am going to him,” she said, “and there is no one who can stop me.”

Isabel did not accept the challenge. She knew that the life and the conduct of her younger sister had now passed beyond her restraint.

“And what are you going to do when you get there?” she asked, in the Brahmin manner.

“ I am going to save him, and if he will have me, I will marry him.”

“You are of age, and you are independent,” replied Isabel coldly. “I suppose there is nothing to be said.”

This crisis that had come to Madeleine Morley at thirty-five acted like a miracle upon her physical condition. She no longer felt languid, anæmic, incapable of action. She was alert, she was alive, the blood seemed to storm through her veins. She felt young and resourceful. At last she had a mission in life. Fate had given her something to do, and to do at once. As she dressed, she planned. When the last hair was in place, and the last eye was hooked, she rushed to the telephone. She called up her lawyer, and with an energy that startled the placid old man, bade him meet her at the Charles Street Jail immediately. Then she put on her hat, and cast one last look at herself in the glass. There she saw a new creature. She had hitherto considered herself an impossible old maid, unattracted and unattractive. But now there greeted her two eager, flushed cheeks, two brilliant, excited blue eyes. Why, there stood before her the young girl that she thought she had left behind her fifteen years ago! And this for an alleged murderer! Shame and exaltation struggled together within her. But the love of her life won, and, without bidding her sister good-by, she went out of the house, and walked to the Charles Street Jail.

Artists for centuries have tried to depict the descent of an angel into hell. But no canvas can portray the emotions of a pure and sensitive soul on entering the Inferno. The prison is the depository of crime. Its locks, its bolts, its sentinels, are the evidences of spiritual defalcation. Its very odor has the unmistakable criminal taint. No disinfectant can eliminate the acrid presence of the soul defective. Drop the petal of the rose into the fumes of certain acids, and it shrivels on the instant. Twenty-four hours ago Madeleine Morley would have shriveled at the very thought of prison contact. But now, with her heart beating high, she marched up to the door like a grenadier. It happened that the Sheriff of Suffolk County was in the office. This important official had a kindly nature, and listened to Madeleine Morley with deference. He perceived at a glance that she was an aristocrat; and, besides, petty prison regulations are not made for those who are incarcerated on the charge of murder.

“I will have him brought down to the guardroom,” said the Sheriff.

So Madeleine Morley was ushered through two bolted doors, into the rectangular guardroom. She held her head high and haughtily. The prison odor smote her, and she did not choke. She had steeled her heart against any horror, and felt strong to bear anything. Before her three corridors radiated, with cells tier on tier above one another. When she heard the doors clang behind her, and found herself locked in, shut out from her own pure world, she experienced a momentary faintness. But her thoughts were fixed on the man whom her childish folly had brought to this place, and she became resolved.

The Sheriff went himself. When the turnkey unlocked the cell, the Sheriff stepped inside, and found Winch lying on his cot, asleep.

“There is some one who wishes to see you,” he said to the prisoner brusquely. He did not explain that it was a woman. The accused followed the Sheriff along the narrow, railed corridor, and descended the short, iron steps slowly, wondering who could possibly seek him in his degradation.

Madeleine was sitting in the centre of the guardroom on a bench; her back was toward this tragic processional. As the steps approached her, the color left her cheeks like chalk. Then she arose. The prisoner and the woman confronted each other. The Sheriff cast an experienced look upon the two, motioned to the turnkey to unlock the gate that led to his office, and disappeared. Then the guardroom official turned, and, watching the pair warily, stood at the entrance to liberty.

Madeleine looked up into her old lover s face; she, who had not yet shrunk from the prison taint, did not shrink from the moral degradation that makes prisons a necessity. The man stood still, overcome with mortification and flushed with amazement. He had recognized his old sweetheart immediately, and he dared not speak. But she gazed into his degenerate eyes long and steadily. They winced and shifted, and then evaded hers. What a travesty was his face upon the noble countenance which she had once adored! He who had once been a military example had become a slouch. Any officer of the law would have instantly picked him out as a moral wreck, but only she could discern that he was a fallen angel; at least, she thought so. Amid the ravages of crime and dissipation she could see traces of his old beauty, that fatal inheritance which had first fascinated her young heart. His hair was thin and ragged; his cheeks drawn and flabby; his chin had become weak and vacillating; his teeth were stained, and his hands were soiled. Those fifteen years, spent by her in penitence and regret, had succeeded in wiping the gentleman off his figure as you wipe a sentence from a slate. You could see at a glance that Willard Winch was hopeless. But Madeleine Morley, who had never before had the maternal in her nature brought out, did not see. His degradation and his need opened the floodgates of her tenderness as no other condition could have done.

“Willard,” she said very quietly, after she had gauged him with the intuition of a pure and remorseful woman, “won’t you sit down ? ”

She dropped upon the hard bench and drew her gray skirt a little to one side. She was so exquisite, so beautiful, so foreign to this sin-soaked granite pile, that it seemed to the criminal a miracle that she was there.

“Madeleine” — he stammered, “I — I” —

“Don’t say anything until I ask you, Willard,” she began very gently. “I have just heard this morning of your trouble, and I have come to help you. Nothing can shock me now. Tell me truly, are you guilty of this” — she stopped, “or not ? ”

“Before God!” blazed Willard Winch, with the ease of one to whom adjurations are the commonplaces of conversation. “I have been bad enough, God knows, but I am innocent of this. The man was stabbed in the neck and fell into my arms. I knew what my record was, and I ran. That is all.”

For a woman who had never before descended into the nether world, Madeleine Morley had remarkable composure. She bowed her head gravely in assent, and the man, perceiving that she had not lost her old instinct to trust rather than to doubt, drew a long breath of relief.

“ I have sent for my lawyer,” said Madeleine in a low voice, not looking up, “ and he will be here right away. He is one of the most eminent members of the Boston bar, and I shall put your case into his hands. We will do everything we can to get you free, Willard.”

The stupefied man looked at her. To his sodden eyes and bleared memory she had not changed. She was the same girl he had loved. Ah, what a loss had been his! What a wreck he had made of his life,— for a misunderstanding, or a peccadillo! It was the excuse that he had always held to.

“You ought not to do this,” he said. His old manhood tried to assert itself; it had been unexercised for so long that the effort was pathetic in the extreme.

“I am not worth it,” he continued, with a sad smile that somehow illuminated his wasted features; “I am considered hopeless, you know.”

With a dainty, womanly gesture, she laid her gray glove upon his arm; she had not touched his hand.

“Do not—do not say so, Willard! After you get out of this, you will begin all over again, won’t you ? For my sake, will you not? ”

Then her eyes met his, and the abandoned man read in them for the first time the full extent of the sacrifice that she had prepared herself to make.

“No,” he said quickly. “No. I belong to another world now. It is no place for you. I want you to go, — at once.” As he spoke, he arose.

But Madeleine remained seated.

“No, Willard,” she said very softly, “I shall stay here. It is not hard for me to say it now, but you have been on my heart for all these years; this has been my first chance to help you, — to do anything in the world, — and no one shall take it away from me. My folly when we parted — my fault — was greater than yours. I have forgiven you a thousand times, but I have never forgiven myself.”

The man stared down upon her; he was speechless at this abnegation. Before his confused mind could frame adequate words, the prison door opened with a reverberation, and Madeleine arose to meet her lawyer.

“Mr. Saltenway,” she began, “the man I have just been speaking to is an old friend. We were once engaged. I dismissed him fifteen years ago, and he — he went wrong afterwards. He is here accused of murder. He tells me he is innocent, and I believe him. I want you to save him. Come, and I will introduce you.”

The old family lawyer, who had known something and suspected more of Madeleine’s history, betrayed no surprise. As if he were in a drawing-room, he accompanied his client to the bench where Willard Winch stood, and accepted the introduction in a natural way.

“Now,” said Madeleine, “I will leave you two together. And, Willard,” — she looked up at the tall man who had straightened himself instinctively at the gentleman’s approach,— “I am going to send you some things to make you comfortable; I want you to accept them without a word; as soon as the Sheriff will let me, I will call again.”

The processes of the law laugh at impatience, and the middle-aged lawyer who engages in a new kind of fight proceeds deliberately. Mr. Saltenway had never had a murder case before; indeed, this was his first visit to the Charles Street Jail. But he threw himself and all the resources of his profession into this unsavory cause; and discussed it with guarded cheerfulness when Madeleine Morley arrived at his office, promptly, every morning.

In a curious way, the positions which the two sisters had held toward each other for so many years seemed now to be changed. Madeleine took the initiative; Isabel followed. Madeleine was in good spirits; Isabel was despondent. Madeleine went out; Isabel remained at home.

There was not a nerve in Madeleine’s whole body that was not vibrant. She looked young and happy. God had put into her keeping a lost soul to save, and the responsibility had given her angelic utility. Nothing was allowed to withstand her imperious impatience.

It soon became evident that the man who had been present at this brawl, and whom Willard Winch accused of the murder, must be found before the Grand Jury met. Madeleine poured forth money like water upon detectives and agents. In many states, to be held by the Grand Jury for murder is almost equivalent to a conviction. While the law presupposes every man innocent until he is proved guilty, the contrary is the general practice. This is especially true when a man has had many taints upon his career, and has accumulated what is technically called a “record.”

Miss Madeleine Morley called on Willard Winch twice a week; she also supplied him with some few necessities, and with the many luxuries which a goodnatured officer allows to those incarcerated for capital crime. The oftener she came to the prison, the greater her pity grew, and the more convinced she became that Willard was her mission in life. Every Boston woman must have a mission, — God, or possibly Buddha, supplying the material. Often a whole life is spent in hunting for it. Strained expressions on tired faces go searching for it through the Back Bay. Among the numberless fads, which may easily unsex the average woman, Madeleine’s was the most reasonable, for it was Man. No argument could be brought to dissuade her from the new vocation which was giving her the first happiness that she had known in many years. If she had gone into the Associated Charities, she would have obtained a better perspective. As it was, she lacked focus, and had heart. She was thoroughly satisfied with the exchange.

As the weeks dragged on, she became acquainted with her old lover. This was true in a very searching sense. Most intimate friends are not acquainted; few husbands and wives understand each other. But Willard Winch told everything. He concealed nothing of his degradation. He had gambled, he had stolen, he had committed almost every crime in the catalogue. He related their history with a certain gusto that did not smack of shame. The innocent woman, alternately repelled and fascinated, sat listening to these tales of outlawry. Winch had something of the man left in him yet; and tried his best to disgust the innocent creature, who, in an exalted state of penitence, was throwing herself at his feet. But he could not fathom the heart of the woman. She who would condone any crime, who would well-nigh glorify any misdemeanor, that the man whom she loved had committed in the past, would not forgive an infidelity.

Once, at the end of one of his long, rambling, easily mouthed confessions, his eyes, that had hardly ever sought hers, turned upon her with a fierce intentness which she had not witnessed before.

“Madeleine,” he said, “I want you to believe this, if you don’t anything else that I’ve told you. I have been all kinds of a blackleg. There is no sin and deviltry that I have not dipped into. There is only one thing I have not done. I suppose it was only because I could not. I have never loved any other woman but you. I have never kissed any other woman, or made love to any other woman. You have been the star of my life, and I thank God for it. It’s the only thing I’ve got left to me.”

He stopped for a moment, running his hungry eyes over every sweet feature of her face. Then he controlled himself, gave a slight laugh and a shrug.

“I shall not speak of it again, Madeleine, and I want you to forget it. No woman has done more for man than you are doing for me. Do you think I will pay you back in — that ? ”

Willard Winch stood up, made with something of his old courtly grace a formal bow, motioned to the corridor officer, who watched him carefully, and without another word walked back to his cell.

From that hour Madeleine Morley would have given him her soul to trample upon.

Psychology has for ages been trying to interpret crime. It is the result of heredity. It is the conclusion of environment. It is the disintegration of the cells in the nerve tissue. It is disease. It is insanity. It is the flow of external circumstance, and the ebb of our moral tide. But all agree that crime is contagious. That is one of the reasons why the criminal is shut in.

Innocence has not been deemed worthy of volumes and research. And yet, it is predicated by a like environment and heredity. It is the moral ozone that vivifies all adjacent decaying life, and is as great as, if not a greater mystery than, crime itself. The abnormal can generally be more easily explained than the normal. It is probably more natural for the tree to grow crooked than to grow straight.

Purity is the burning-glass that consumes foulness. Or, say that some pure natures stand impregnable, like a mountain of corundum. At this, sin may peck a thousand years in vain. Other white souls are more like a hill of grass-grown gravel: they may be tunneled from without. Before these, somehow or other, sin does not shrink. The bad person has an intuition for the possibilities of evil that has never been adequately recognized. Herein lies the philosophy of the mutual gravitation of the weak.

Madeleine Morley was of the adamantine kind. Upon her, sin might splash, and leave her as white and as transparent as before. Her innocence was of the invigorating variety. One could not help being better for knowing her, and nobler for being her daily companion. To a great extent this had been so while she had lived a negative existence. But now that she had become positive, this was peculiar in a marked degree. Upon Willard Winch she had been acting as an X-ray upon a cancerous growth. This she did not realize. The ray does not know that it heals, but the patient knows it. In no sense of the word could her relation with the prisoner be called a duel between innocence and sin. Before her beautiful personality, her exquisite delicacy, and her elemental virtue, the evil in Willard Winch seemed to shrivel. And in so exalted a state was she that the knowledge of what he had been did her no harm. He could not acquaint her with evil, for the reason that her mind was only receptive of good. His repeated confessions, and at times unnecessarily noxious details, only left her more full of pity than before. It is to be doubted whether she realized at all the nature of the many crimes that he seemed eager to admit. But Madeleine was not a saint. She was a loving, dependent woman, and her absolute belief in his fidelity to her through crime and temptation outweighed in her sweet heart any sin that he had committed.

It happened, three weeks after Mr. Saltenway had been thrown into this case, that a minor arrest was made upon the street of a suburb. The man was held as an old offender, pending an investigation of his record by the court and by the probation officer. Ever alert for the slightest clue, Mr. Saltenway looked this man up, and arranged for him to be confronted with Winch before sentence to the Island could be passed. Willard recognized the man immediately. The graver charge took precedence over the lesser one, and the offender was lodged in Charles Street Jail. In one of those moments in which guilt believes itself to be trapped by indubitable evidence, the man confessed that he had killed his companion in hot-headed self-defense. This confession was all that was needed to relieve Willard Winch from the charge of murder, and to release him from jail, on sufficient surety for his appearance as witness for the government.

Madeleine Morley had the Christmas nature. She loved beautiful surprises. She never gave a present but that she planned the greater and the most unexpected pleasure. In this she was like a child. Eternal youth is the rarest gift that God grants to us. It is the most misunderstood, the most lovable, and the most joygiving. When Madeleine heard from her lawyer that the man for whom she had been so feverishly searching had not only been found and identified, but had confessed, she clapped her hands like a girl.

“When you have arranged with the District Attorney and the Judge for Willard’s release, let me carry the papers to him myself. I want to be the one to bring him the good news. I want him to walk out of prison a free man with me.”

The white - haired, hard - headed old lawyer turned his face modestly away at the sight of his client’s artless enthusiasm. Professionally he had admired her work in the prisoner’s behalf, but personally he had never approved of her motive for doing it.

It took only a day for the necessary papers to be made out for the attorney’s surety and the release of Willard Winch; this was done, and these were duly forwarded by messenger to the old mansion in Charles Street. Madeleine was sitting with her sister, humming a happy air. To this Isabel was listening with an apprehensive frown. The maid knocked softly, and laid a legal envelope in Madeleine’s hand.

“Shall I go?” asked Isabel, in a wellbred, sarcastic tone; she had noticed her sister’s vivid blush.

But Madeleine tore the envelope open, and drew out the formal order to the Sheriff of Suffolk County. Then she looked up at her sister with brave appeal. Isabel softened, and stretched out her hand in her old maternal way. Then Madeleine flung herself at her elder’s feet as if she had been a child at confession, and kissed her sister’s hand with a beautiful submission.

“Isabel, dear,” she said, “Willard Winch has suffered much. He is innocent, and I shall carry him this message of liberty myself. I have planned for him to come to this house, — if you don’t mind ? He has nowhere else to go to. You know very well that I have always loved this man. I owe him a great reparation ; and when he is free, I shall ask him to marry me. You won’t make it hard for me, — will you, dear ? ”

Isabel Morley looked down upon the child whom she had cherished, the sister whom she had shielded,— and, like many another, beheld what she thought to be the ruin of the being whom she loved supremely. What she had sowed she could not reap. And the peace that she had prayed and planned for was not to be hers. Not knowing it, she had nurtured a stronger nature than her own, and this now arose before her and commanded her.

“Madeleine,” she said, “you have chosen madly, but I pray God to grant you the miracle of happiness. I — I shall stand by you; I always have.”

Very solemnly the two sisters kissed each other; and then Madeleine went out to her old lover.

“I think he expects something, Miss Morley,” said the Sheriff, conducting her within the guardroom, with much ceremony, “but I have not told him. We seldom do unless it is sure. I will bring him down myself.”

Charles Street Jail had wrought a surprising effect upon the prisoner of suspicion. Regular hours, coarse and healthful prison food, long meditation, and especially the inspiration of his devoted visitor,— these had combined to clear the prisoner’s eyes and complexion, and to restore some of the natural splendor of his appearance. Care and decent living would certainly make him an unusually handsome man.

His repeated interviews with Madeleine had produced a sort of hypnotic consequence upon him. She had willed him to be good, and had prayed her soul out to this effect, and he had almost come to think that he was. Willard had spent hours in regretting the folly, and especially the insecurity, of his choice in life. The old romantic feeling that he had for Madeleine as a girl returned to him strongly. He had told the truth when he said that he had been true to her; for his career, curiously enough, had never included women. They had disgusted him with too many advances. For the overbold he could never care. Madeleine had always been to him a restraining dream in that respect. And now the reality was even more intoxicating. She surrounded him with a prismatic halo. Besides, she had become his guardian angel when no one else would claim him as friend or even as acquaintance. At times he was persuaded that nobility of purpose had been born within him, that he had turned his back upon his old life forever. These thoughts were especially active after she had left him. He then threw himself upon the cot, when the iron door had clanged, and dreamed of a respectable and unexciting future. These visions, it must be said to his credit, did not involve the woman who had sacrificed herself to him. For he felt then that he should be strong enough to do great things alone. Most lawless men do not like to acknowledge, even to themselves, their dependence upon a woman.

As Willard Winch approached with something of his old military step, Madeleine’s heart beat rapidly. But for her years, she was still a girl.

“Oh, Willard!” she cried, “I am so happy I can’t wait another instant! Here it is!”

She thrust the paper into his hands. Comprehending what it was, he passed it on to the Sheriff, who looked at them both with a quizzical smile.

“I suppose I can go now,” said Winch casually; his new independence of manner, Madeleine thought, became him well.

“Yes, Mr. Winch,” the Sheriff answered courteously, “I am compelled to refuse to keep you any longer as my guest, although I regret to have you go.”

“The regrets are entirely on your side,” Winch answered, with a smile that would have been well bred, had not the lips that framed it been ruined by dissipation. But Madeleine was no student of physiognomy. She had chosen to look at this man through her own haze, and she would do it to the end of her life.

“How soon can you be ready to go?” she asked, with girlish impatience. “I want you to go out with me.”

The released prisoner looked at his savior good-naturedly.

“I guess I can get ready in about five minutes, — hey, Sheriff ? I can’t go too soon to please me. If you will excuse me, Madeleine, I will be right back.”

It seemed an hour to the woman, but in reality it was a very short time, when the man returned. He was neatly and almost luxuriously dressed in the clothes that she had ordered sent him from a fashionable tailor. They did not speak. With a light jest he shook hands with the Sheriff, and passed through the iron portals, out of the granite prison, and into the air, a free man.

The sun was shining joyously, and the July air was hot with life. Children were playing opposite in the little park, and beyond was the Charles River Basin, and some shipping. The two walked side by side, still silently, she hardly daring to say what she must, and he not knowing how to express the gratitude that he really felt. Something about her made him diffident at that moment.

They came to the intersecting street, where the great tide of travel passes out into Cambridge. The jangle of the cars quickened the man’s blood. The passing of a great van filled with kegs of beer brought the flush to his cheeks. The hurry of the people unconsciously made his feet forge ahead. The reek from the familiar corner saloon recalled to him days of madness and of freedom which he thought he had forgotten. Why, the whole world was busy, was eager and independent, and it called upon him to go. Go ? where could he go but back to the old haunts? Where but to the old places, and to the people who knew him and tolerated him and distrusted him, and without whom he could not live ? Go ? Why, go back to the old conditions where every night brought forth a new hazard, and every day brought forth a hunger, or a fear, or an apprehension, or an escape. Ah, what was there in the world equal to the battle of wits? If others’ brains were keener than his, had he not had his fight, and would he not perish like a man? And all the while the woman walked beside him, fluttering, dainty, decided.

They passed the great aorta of travel, crossed over to the western side of the street, and drew near to Madeleine’s home. The woman’s feet were slow and slower; the man kept pace with her impatiently. He was free! And the lawless spirit that had been born within him was irresistibly drawing him to the old life that he thought he had forgotten, and which he had tried to persuade himself that he despised. Before the high stone steps Madeleine Morley halted, and the man beside her came to a stop. He could look over her head, and he did so. Beyond, the street yawned into the Common on the one side, and the Public Garden on the other. These the traffic cut as with a wedge. Oh, the sound of it was absinthe to him! The very appearance of a black hole of a livery stable was a joy. The hurry of the crowd and the impatience of the men were an intoxication. Madeleine noticed his rapt expression, and did not understand it.

“I want you to come in,” she said softly. “ I have planned for you to stay with us. I did not want to tell you before. It is my little surprise. Your room is all ready for you, Willard, and Isabel is upstairs to greet you.”

She turned to go up, but Winch did not follow. She looked quickly into his face. There was an expression in it that she had not seen for some time. It was like that of a fox that has been caged, and is let out into the open. He was panting.

“Why, Willard! Are n’t you coming? I’ve something very important to tell you.”

Then the man’s thoughts rolled back, and he looked down.

“No, little girl,” he said, with a halfamused smile curling his lips. “I cannot go. Don’t you see how impossible it is ? Why, child, can’t you understand?”

Yes, — at last, — she began to understand; that which she saw in his eyes dissipated slowly, almost imperceptibly, the mist from in front of her own.

“Oh!” cried Madeleine; her heart leaped; she grew very pale and began to tremble.

“Don’t think,” interrupted the malefactor, with a cold gleam and a tender smile, “don’t think that I am not grateful for what you have done for me. No other woman has done more for a person who does not deserve it; but believe me, my dear, that I can best show my gratitude to you in this way.”

He stopped and lifted his hat before her, standing impatiently still. But the woman no longer met his eyes. Hers had dropped, and tears were falling from them bitterly. It seemed to her as if the whole world had been extinguished, and it had been so brief a one!

“Won’t you shake hands?” he said. “You are always the same to me. You know that.”

But Madeleine did not answer. She dared not make a motion, fearing lest she might faint upon her own steps. With an intuition uncommon to his sodden nature, the criminal understood. He looked down upon the woman stricken before him, with all the pity of which he was capable. Then he made an elaborate bow, and walked quickly up the street. At the next corner Willard Winch stopped and looked back. Madeleine had not stirred. With a half sigh that was almost a half sneer, he turned again, and strode faster on. People swept between. At the corner of Beacon Street he drew a breath of relief.

“ Another incident closed,” he thought.

But Madeleine stood there, a breaking pillar of woe, until her sister Isabel ran down the steps, flung warm arms about her, and drew her back into their old life.