surprise of Aggie, and, truth to tell, of herself.
There were two factors that chiefly influenced her decision. The first was due to the feeling that, since the world had rejected her, she need no longer concern herself with the world's opinion, or retain any scruples over it. Back of this lay her bitter sentiment toward the man who had been the direct cause of her imprisonment, Edward Gilder. It seemed to her that the general warfare against the world might well be made an initial step in the warfare she meant to wage, somehow, sometime, against that man personally, in accordance with the hysterical threat she had uttered to his face.
The factor that was the immediate cause of her decision on an irregular mode of life was an editorial in one of the daily newspapers. This was a scathing arraignment of a master in high finance. The point of the writer's attack was the grim sarcasm for such methods of thievery as are kept within the law. That phrase held the girl's fancy, and she read the article again with a quickened interest. Then, she began to meditate.
She herself was in a curious, indeterminate attitude as far as concerned the law. It was the law that had worked the ruin of her life, which she had striven to make wholesome. In consequence, she felt for the law no genuine respect, only detestation as for the epitome of injustice. Yet, she gave it a superficial respect, born of those three years of suffering which had been the result of the penalty inflicted on her. It was as an effect of this latter feeling that she was determined on one thing of vital importance: that never would she be guilty of anything to pit her against the law's decrees. She had known too many hours of anguish in the doom set on her life because she had been deemed a violator of the law. No, never would she let herself take any position in which the law could accuse her.... But there remained the fact that the actual cause of her long misery was this same law, manipulated by the man she hated. It had punished her, though she had been without fault. For that reason, she must always regard it as her enemy, must, indeed, hate it with an intensity beyond words--with an intensity equal to that she bore the man, Gilder. Now, in the paragraph she had just read she found a clue to suggestive thought, a hint as to a means by which she might satisfy her rancor against the law that had outraged her--and this in safety since she would attempt nought save that within the law.
Mary's heart leaped at the possibility back of those three words, "within the law." She might do anything, seek any revenge, work any evil, enjoy any mastery, as long as she should keep within the law. There could be no punishment then. That was the lesson taught by the captain in high finance. He was at pains always 

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