They sat down and the younger man eyed the package, turned it over, looked at the address nervously, pulled at his mustache as he sank back, while the elder man was saying: "I believe I understand you, Tom--better than any one else in the world understands you. I believe you have not a better friend on earth than I right at this minute." The Judge turned around and said in a disturbed voice, "I am sure that's the God's truth, Doctor Jim." Then after a sigh he added, "And this is what I've done to you!" "And will keep right on doing to me as long as you live," piped the elder man, twitching his mouth and nose contemptuously. "As long as I live, I fancy," repeated the other. In the pause the young man put his hands to his hips and his chin on his breast as he slouched down in the chair and asked: "Where's Laura?" "Over at her mother's," replied the father. "Nobody will interrupt us--and so I thought we could get down to grass roots and talk this thing out." The Judge crossed his handsome ankles and sat looking at his trim toes. "I suppose that idea is as good as any." He put one long, lean, hairy hand on the short, fat knee beside him and said: "The whole trouble with our Protestant religion is that we have no confessor. So some of us talk to our lawyers, and some of us talk to our doctors, and in extreme unction we talk to our newspapers." He grinned miserably, and went on: "But we all talk to some one, and now I'm going to talk to you--talk for once, Doctor, right out of my soul--if I have one." He rose nervously, obeying some purely physical impulse, and then sat down again, with his hands in his thick, black hair, and his elbows on his bony knees. "All right, Tom," piped the Doctor, "go ahead." "Well, then," he began as he looked at the floor before him, "do you suppose I don't know that you know what I'm up to? Do you think I don't know even what the town is buzzing about? Lord, man, I can feel it like a scorching fire. Why," he exclaimed with emotion, "feeling the hearts of men is my job. I've been at it for fifteen years--" He broke off and looked up. "How could I get up before a jury and feel them out man by man as I talked if I wasn't sensitive to these things? You've seen me make them cry when I was in the practice. How could I make them cry if I didn't feel like crying myself. You're a doctor--you know that. People forget what I am--what a thousand stringed instrument I am. Now, Doctor Jim, let me tell you something. This is the bottom hard pan of the truth: I never before really cared for these women--these other women--when I got them. But I do care for the chase, I do care for the risk of it--for the exhilaration of it--for the joy of it!"