Then, stopping short, his back to the closed door, he stared, unbelieving, at someone who rose at his entrance and hurried forward, hands outstretched, to greet him. “I knew you would come here!” said Anice Lanier. “I _felt_ you would, so I hurried over as soon as they adjourned. Aren’t you glad to see me?” He still stared, speechless, dumbfounded. She had caught his unresponsive hands, and was looking up into his tired, hopeless eyes with a wealth of pity and sympathy that broke through the mask of blank misery on his face, and softened the hard lines of mouth and jaw into a shadow of a smile. “It was good of you to come,” he said at last. “I thought I couldn’t bear to see anyone just now. But—it’s so different with you. I——” He ceased speaking. His overstrung nerves were battling against a childish longing to bury his hot face in those cool little white hands whose lightest touch so thrilled him, and to tell this gentle, infinitely tender girl all about his sorrows, his broken hopes, his crushed self-esteem. In spirit he could feel her arms about his aching head, drawing it to her breast; could hear her whispered words of soothing and encouragement. Then, on the moment, the babyish impulse passed and he was himself again, self-controlled, outwardly stolid, realizing as never before that the price of strength is loneliness. “I am beaten,” he went on, “but I think, we made as good a fight as we could. Perhaps another time——” She withdrew her hands from his. Into her big eyes had crept something almost akin to scorn. “You are giving up?” she asked incredulously. “You will make no further effort to——” “What more is to be done? The Committee on Credentials——” “I know. I was there. It’s all been a wretched mistake from the very beginning. Oh, _why_ were you so foolish about those letters?” “Letters? What letters?” “The letters sent you with news of Mr. Conover’s plans for——” “Those anonymous letters I got? What do _you_ know——” “I wrote them,” said Anice Lanier. CHAPTER X ANICE INTERVENES “You wrote them? _You_ wrote them?” muttered Standish, over and over, stupid, dazed, refusing to believe, to understand. “Yes,” she said, “I wrote them. And I wrote one to Mr. Ansel. He was wiser than you. He tried to profit by what I——” “And I—_I_ thought it might be Gerald Conover.” “Gerald? He never knew any of the more secret details of the campaign. His father couldn’t trust him.” “And he _did_ trust _you_.”