"I feel closer to you than I have felt since I put the barrier between us. For you are in this country to-night--I could go to the telephone there five feet away and reach you if I would. I looked to-day in the papers and saw that they would be giving Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera House, and knowing your father as I do, I think he will take you there. I can hear the music rising and see you drinking in the harmony, and as it swells into exquisite pain, and thrills through the holy places of your soul where are old memories of our love, sweetheart, maybe your spirit will go forth in God's strange universe where we all dwell neighbours, loosed from those material chains that bind our bodies, and will seek the heart that is searching for you out there in the highway of heaven. I seem to feel you now, dear soul--did the music fling your spirit free for a second till it touched my own? I am so happy, Jeanette--even to love you and to know that you have loved me, and must always love me while you are you and I am I." And now let us consider the final exhibit. It will be necessary to turn back the action of this story a month and a half and sit with John Barclay and his friend, former federal judge Elijah Westlake Bemis, before the fire in the wide fireplace in the Barclay home, one cold January night, a week after Barclay had gone free from the court and the world had hissed him. They were talking of the judge's business future, and the judge was saying:-- "John, how did Bob Hendricks ever straighten out that affair in the treasurer's office in connection with the first year's taxes of the old Wheat Company? What did he do with it finally?" Barclay looked at the fire and then turned his searchlight eyes into Bemis's. There was not a quiver. The man sat there without a muscle of his parchment face moving. His eyes were squinted up, looking at the tip of his long cigar. "Why?" asked Barclay. "Well," responded Bemis, impassive as an ox, "it would help me in my business to know. Tell me." He spoke the last two words as one in authority. "Well," answered Barclay, "one day back in the seventies, I was appointed to check up the treasurer's book, and I found where he had fixed it on the county books--apparently between two administrations. I recognized his hand; and it made the balance for the first time." Bemis smoked awhile. "What time in the seventies?" he asked. There was a pause. "In January, 1879." Bemis grinned a wicked, mean little grin and said: "That settles it. I believe I am safe in buying the waterworks." "What are you going to do to Bob?" Barclay asked. "Nothing, nothing--absolutely nothing, if he has any sense and drops this municipal ownership tommyrot. Absolutely nothing." Again the grin came over his face, and at the end of a pause Barclay said:-- "Well, if not, what then?"