John Baird leaned back in the corner of the carriage and folded his arms also. His heart was leaping beneath them. "Great God!" he said, out of the darkness. "I wish someone had said such words to me--years ago--and not left me afterwards! Years ago!" "I thought so," his companion answered, briefly. "You could not have painted it with such flaming power--otherwise." They did not speak again during the drive. They scarcely exchanged a dozen words before they parted. The train was in the station when they entered it. Five minutes later John Baird stood upon the platform, looking after the carriages as they rolled out noisily behind trailing puffs of smoke and steam. He had asked no questions, and, so far as his own knowledge was concerned, this was the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story. But he knew that there had been a story, and there might have been a tragedy. It seemed that the intensity of his own cry for justice and mercy had arrested at least one of the actors in it before the curtain fell. A few nights later, as they sat together, Baird and Latimer spoke of this incident and of the lecture it had followed upon. "Repentance! Repentance!" Latimer said. "What led _you_ to dwell upon repentance?" "Thirty years of life," was Baird's answer. "Forty of them." He was leaning forward gazing into the red-hot coals. "And after our talk," he added, deliberately. "Margery." Latimer turned and gazed at him. Baird nodded. "Yes," he said. "Her picture. Her innocent face and the soft, helpless youth of it. Such young ignorance is helpless--helpless! If in any hour of ruthlessness--or madness--a man had done such tenderness a wrong, what repentance--_what_ repentance could undo?" "None," said Latimer, and the words were a groan. "None--through all eternity." It was not a long silence which followed, but it seemed long to both of them. A dead stillness fell upon the room. Baird felt as if he were waiting for something. He knew he was waiting for something, though he could not have explained to himself the sensation. Latimer seemed waiting too--awaiting the power and steadiness to reach some resolve. But at length he reached it. He sat upright and clutched the arms of his chair. It was for support. "Why not now?" he cried; "why not now? I trust you! I trust you! Let me unburden my soul. I will try." It was Baird's involuntary habit to sink into easy attitudes; the long, supple form of his limbs and body lent themselves to grace and ease. But he sat upright also, his hands unconsciously taking hold upon the arms of his chair as his companion did. For a moment the two gazed into each other's eyes, and the contrast between their types was a strange one--the one man's face dark, sallow, harsh, the other fine, sensitive, and suddenly awake with emotion. "I trust you," said Latimer again. "I would not have confessed the truth to any other living creature--upon the rack." His forehead looked damp under his black locks.