Ferguson’s message had been an importunate demand to let him come to her. She refused, said she would see no one until she was at liberty to clear herself, which would not be for some days yet. Her voice showed a tremulous urgency, a note of pleading, new to his ears and infinitely sweet. But he could not break down her resolution; she begged him to do as she asked, not to seek her out, not to demand any explanations until she was ready to give them. The one favor she granted him was that when the time was up and she could break her silence, he could come for her. This did not happen until Wednesday. That morning she ’phoned to them all that she could now see them and tell them what they wanted to hear. A meeting was arranged at the Whitney office for three that afternoon and Ferguson went to fetch her. They met in Mrs. O’Malley’s front parlor, considerately vacated and with the folding doors closed against intrusion. Without greeting Ferguson took her hands and held them, looking down into her face. She was beaming, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shy. She began to say something about being at last able to vindicate herself, but he cut her off: "Before you go into that, I want to say something to you." "No, that’s not fair; I must speak first and you must let me. It’s my privilege." "With the others maybe, but not with me. What I have to say has to be said _before_ I hear. Esther, do you know what it is?" She was silent, her head drooping, her hands growing cold in his grasp. He went on, very quietly and simply: "It’s that I ask you to be my wife. And I must ask it before the clearing or vindicating or any rubbish of that sort. I don’t know what _you’ll_ say to it and I don’t want any answer now. That’s at your own good time and your own good pleasure. It’s just that I wanted you to see how I stand and have stood since that night when we walked through the woods together. Come along now—it’s nearly three, and we mustn’t keep them waiting." It was a very different Esther who sat in Wilbur Whitney’s private office, facing those who had once been her accusers. She gave no evidence of rancor, greeted them with a frank friendliness, smiled with a radiance they set down to the rebound from long tension and strain. Suzanne, her jealous fires burned out, could acknowledge now that she was handsome; Mr. Janney wondered at her look of breeding. "A fine girl," old Whitney thought, as he studied her through his glasses, "spirited and high-mettled as a racer." "It’s a long story," she said, "and for you to understand it I’ll have to go back to a time when none of you had ever heard of me. And before I begin, I want to say to Mrs. Janney," she turned to the older woman eagerly earnest, "if I had understood people better, if I hadn’t been hardened and made suspicious by the struggle I’d had, I would have trusted you and told you more, and all this misery would have been averted. So, in a way it was my fault, and being such I’ve suffered for it.