A man who cashes a forged cheque and declines to say where he got it, how it came into his possession, is quickly disposed of by a British jury, than which there is no body of men more acute and intelligent." "Why do you refuse to tell the truth and clear yourself ?" asked Celia, in a low voice, her lips parted now, with a perplexity, a vivid interest.
He rose, strode up and down the room for a moment or two, then came back to the table, and, with his hands pressing hard on it, looked down at her upturned, anxious face.
"Your belief, your persistent, unreasoning belief in me, upsets me," he said, with a smile, and evidently still making an effort to retain his assumption of cynical indifference and levity.

"I am strongly tempted by it to tell you 'my story,' as the bores on the stage say; but I can't.
However, I will admit that you are right.

I did not forge the accursed thing--I beg your pardon! No, I didn't sign the cheque; but the case, so far as I am concerned, is just as black as if I were guilty.

Hold on a minute! I know what you are going to say; that I am sacrificing myself----" "You have no right to do so," Celia broke in, in a voice that trembled, not only with pity, but with indignation.

"Oh, don't you see! I am only a girl, and I know so little of the world; but I know, I am as sure as I am that--that I am standing here, you have no right, no one has any right, to make such a sacrifice, and certainly no one would be justified in accepting it." She pushed the hair from her forehead with a gesture of impatience.