Silently she read, paling a little but otherwise giving no sign to show her father how the tide of her thought was setting. Twice over she read the article; then, pushing the paper back, looked at old Flint with eyes that seemed to question his very soul--eyes that saw the living truth, below. "It is a lie!" said she, at last, in a grave, quiet voice. "What?" blurted the old man. "A--a lie?" She nodded. "Yes," said she. "A lie." Furious, he ripped open the paper, and once more shoved it at her. "Fool!" cried he. "Read _that_!" And his shaking, big-knuckled finger tapped the editorial on "Socialism Unveiled." "No," she answered, "I need read no more. I know; I understand!" "You--you know _what_?" choked Flint. "This is an editorial, I tell you! It represents the best thought and the most careful opinion of the paper. And it condemns this man, absolutely, as a criminal and a menace to society. It denounces him and his whole gang of Socialists or Anarchists or White-slavers--they're all the same thing--as a plague to the world. That's the editor's opinion; and remember, he's on the ground, there. He has all the facts. You--_you_ are at a distance, and have none! Yet you set up your futile, childish opinion--" "No more, father! No more!" cried Catherine, also standing up. She faced him calmly, coldly, magnificently. "You can't talk to me this way, any more. Cannot, and must not! As I see this thing--and my woman's intuition tells me more in a minute than you can explain away in an hour--this fabrication here has all, or nearly all, been invented and carried out by you. For what reason? This--to discredit this man! To make me hate and loathe him! To force me back to Waldron. To--" "Stop!" shouted the old man, in a well-assumed passion. "No daughter of mine shall talk to me this way! Silence! It is monstrous and unthinkable. It--it is horrible beyond belief! Silence, I tell you--and--" "No, father, not silence," she replied, with perfect poise. "Not silence now, but speech. Either this thing is true or it is false. In either case, I must know the facts. The papers? No truth in _those_! The finding of the courts? today, they are a by-word and a mockery! All I can trust is the evidence of my own senses; what I hear, and feel, and see. So then--" "Then?" gulped the Billionaire, holding the back of his chair in a trembling grasp. "Just this, father. I'm going to Rochester, myself, to investigate this thing, to see this man, to hear his side of the story, to know--" "Do that," cried Flint in a terrible voice, "and you never enter these doors again! From the minute you leave Idle Hour on that fool's errand, my daughter is dead to me, forever!" Swept clean off his feet by rage, as well as by the deadly fear of what might happen if his daughter really were to learn the truth, he had lost his head completely. With quiet attention, the girl regarded him, then smiled inscrutably.