"But I know better," sobbed Aleta, for the tears had come by now. "He never was sick in his life. He thought he'd lost me when the money went ... his money in the California Safe Deposit Company." Frank took a seat beside her on the couch, whose flaming, joyous colors seemed a mockery just then. "Aleta," he said, "I wish I could help you. I wish I knew how, but I don't." She lifted her tear-stained eyes to his with a curious bitterness. "No ... you don't. But thank you. Just your coming's helped me, Frank. I'm better. Go--and let me think things over." She tried to smile, but the tears came. "Life's a hideous puzzle. Perhaps if I'd gone with him, all would have come right.... I'd have made him happy." "But what about yourself?" Again that bitter, enigmatic look came to her eyes. "I guess ... that doesn't matter, Frank." He left her, a queer ache in his heart. Was she right about the man's committing suicide. Poor devil! He had stolen for a woman. Others had filched his plunder. Then God had taken his misguided life. But had He? Was God a murderer? A passive conniver at theft? No, that were blasphemy! Yet, if He _permitted_ such things--? No, that couldn't be, either. It was all an abominable enigma, as Aleta said. Unless--the thought came startlingly--it were all a dream, a nightmare. Thus Kant, the great philosopher, believed. Obsessed by the idea, he paused before a book-store. Its show window prominently displayed Francisco Stanley's latest novel. Frank missed the mellow wisdom of his father's counsel seriously. He entered the shop, found a volume of Kant and scanned it for some moments till he read: "This world's life is only an appearance, a sensuous image of the pure spiritual life, and the whole of Sense is only a picture swimming before our present knowing faculty like a dream and having no reality in itself." Acting upon a strange impulse, he bought the book, marked the passage and ordered it sent to Aleta. A week after Ruef's confession the trial of Mayor Schmitz began. It dragged through the usual delays which clever lawyers can exact by legal technicality. Judge Dunne, sitting in the auditorium of the Bush Street synagogue, between the six-tinned ceremonial candlesticks and in front of the Mosiac tablets of Hebraic law, dispensed modern justice. Meanwhile the Committee of Seven sprang suddenly into being. A morning paper announced that Schmitz had handed the reins of the city over to a septette of prominent citizens. Governor Gillette lauded this action. But Rudolph Spreckels disowned the Committee. Langdon and Heney were suspicious of its purpose. So the Committee of Seven resigned. At this juncture the Schmitz trial ended in conviction of the Mayor which was tantamount to his removal from office. It left a vacancy which, nominally, the Supervisors had the power to fill. But they were under Langdon's orders. Actually, therefore, the District Attorney found himself confronted by the task of naming a new mayor.