He turned toward her with the combination of wistfulness and whimsicality in his smile which first had attracted and then animated the lonely girl. “Miss Trent,” said he, “I think you are the truest woman I ever have met. I am obsessed by the thought of you. Oh, not you, really; rather the idea you represent--the idea of absolute truth. A woman like you should not fear the opinion of anyone. Will you remember that--say, when lifting your eyes to those of the very next person you meet?” Dolores assured him that she would. At the same time, in her thoughts, she assured herself. Just as the primary appetence common to all animal life is the right to live, the second appetence common to women is the right to love. She was not ashamed of her love when facing that inner tribunal called Truth. Why, indeed, should she fear the opinion of any man? Rufus Holt, despite the conventional limitations of his “ideas” of her, was right. She would not, _could_ not feel ashamed. To a place no more official than the bachelor apartments of Justice Roscoe Strang did Rufus Holt dare take the girl who was not his client. And when a Japanese man-servant had ushered them both into the somewhat sombre anteroom, he passed on into a library, but left the door behind him ajar, evidently that she might overhear his conversation with his friend. “You, Rufus?” “Yes, Roscoe, and about that case I tried before you this morning--the Cabot divorce. I’m afraid that a wrong is being done.” A bass chortle sounded. “That’s what modern marriage is--doing each other wrong.” “But this is a wrong gone wrong in that it does not strike right. I have the Cabot co-respondent outside. I want you to meet her.” “Not the Trent girl?” The scrape of a chair underscored a muttered oath. “You don’t dare presume on our friendship to--to----” “Not to commit a professional breach, no,” interrupted Holt. “You ought to know me better than that. And don’t call her ‘the Trent girl.’ No matter whose lawyer I am, I tell you that she does not deserve it.” “Then why didn’t she take the stand? It always looks bad for a woman when she won’t fight for her good name. And why wouldn’t this great philanthropist friend of yours say a word for her, not to mention himself?” “John Cabot is too big a man to be dragged into a court defense of the sort. And any man who hopes to meet his mother’s questioning eyes in Paradise would hesitate to crucify this girl with any more vulgar notoriety. Roscoe, for once in my life, the man in me has convinced the lawyer. Now, as never before, I want the scales of the blind goddess to weigh _with justice_.” “It would seem that one latter-day goddess must have been already weighed--and with justice--to have made such gooseberry jam out of your heart of flint. A face that can make _you_ forget to be a lawyer first! I’d like to see----”