He died when he passed within the walls of a gaol--condemned for theft." There was singular scorn in her last few words, and, dissent as I did from her merciless theories, I was astonished at her adroitness and downrightness--enchanted by the glow of her face.

To this hour, knowing all her life as I do, I can only regard her as a splendid achievement of nature, convincing even when at the most awkward tangents with the general sense and the straitest interpretation of life; convincing even in those other and later incidents, which showed her to be acting not so much by impulse as by the law of her nature.

Her emotions were apparently rationalised at birth--to be derationalised and broken up by a power greater than herself before her life had worked itself out.

I had counted her clever; I had not reckoned with her powers of reasoning.
Influenced as I was by emotion when in her presence, I resorted to a personal application of my opinions--the last and most unfair resort of a disputant.

I said I would rather be Anson dead than Mrs.Anson living; I would rather be the active than the passive sinner; the victim, than a part of that great and cruel machine of penalty.
"The passive sinner!" she replied.