Ridgway, meeting him by chance after luncheon at the foot of the hotel elevator—for in a town the size of Avalanche, Waring had found it necessary to put up at the same hotel as the enemy or take second best, an alternative not to his fastidious taste—rallied him upon the predicament in which he had found himself. “It’s pretty hard to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, without making indiscreet admissions about one’s friends, isn’t it?” he asked, with his genial smile. “Did I make any indiscreet admissions?” “I don’t say you did, though you didn’t look as if you were enjoying yourself. I picked up an impression that you had your back to the wall; seemed to me the jury rather sized it up that way, Mott.” “We’ll know what the jury thinks in a few days.” “Shall we?” the other laughed aloud. “Now, I’m wondering whether we shall know what they really think.” “If you mean that the jury has been tampered with it is your duty to place your evidence before the court, Mr. Ridgway.” “When I hear the verdict I’ll tell you what I think about the jury,” returned the president of the Ore-producing Company, with easy impudence as he passed into the elevator. At the second floor Waring left it and turned toward the ladies’ parlor. It had seemed to him that Aline had looked very tired and frail at the morning session, and he wanted to see Virginia about arranging to have them take a long drive into the country that afternoon. He had sent his card up with a penciled note to the effect that he would wait for her in the parlor. But when he stepped through the double doorway of the ornate room it was to become aware of a prior occupant. She was reclining on a divan at the end of the large public room. Neither lying nor sitting, but propped up among a dozen pillows with head and limbs inert and the long lashes drooped on the white cheeks, Aline looked the pathetic figure of a child fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion after a long strain. Since he was the man he was, unhampered by any too fine sense of what was fitting, he could no more help approaching than he could help the passionate pulse of pity that stirred in his heart at sight of her forlorn weariness. Her eyes opened to find his grave compassion looking down at her. She showed no surprise at his presence, though she had not previously known of it. Nor did she move by even so much as the stir of a limb. “This is wearing you out,” he said, after the long silence in which her gaze was lost helplessly in his. “You must go home—away from it all. You must forget it, and if it ever crosses your mind think of it as something with which you have no concern.” “How can I do that—now.”