difficulty, as happens to all business people at times, you would find the temptation to take the easy way out irresistible. No, Frank," she wrote, "once a thief, always a thief."
Then she went on to say how, in time, my past was bound to become known, and that there would always surround me an atmosphere of spectacular notoriety, which was bound to hurt my friends and make me, myself, uncomfortable. If I married into the class of society where I now found myself the stain would always stick to wife and children, said Léontine. A reformed burglar, said she, might do for a very quiet or else a Bohemian Society, but was bound to be utterly out of his element in the aristocratic circles of my half-brother and his wife. My duty to them, said Léontine, was to tell them that I could never be of their world and to go away. "Do that before they begin to be conscious of their mistake," she wrote.
About here I stopped and did some solid thinking. There was no doubt but that the girl was dead right; absolutely right. I had felt it myself in a vague sort of way. It struck me suddenly, and I tell you the thought was a mighty bitter one, that all of this must, of course, have occurred to Edith, but because she was such an angel of a woman, she had decided on her line of duty and meant to follow it at any cost. I wondered if John had seen it in the same way, and decided that, for his part, he was probably so pleased with himself for the fine thing that he was doing as not to reckon in the cost. You see, I was losing my respect for my half-brother, as a man,
