Presently I was in the street, walking without any consciousness of the way, toward the Park. The ecstasy was gone, the present was back again—the present blacker and more terrible after those radiant moments. I don’t know how to describe that coming back to the hideous reality. Everything was mixed up in me—passion, pity, hope, jealousy. There was a space when that was the fiercest, gripped me like a physical pang, and then passed into a hate for Barker, the man she loved who had left her to face it alone. I think I must have spoken aloud—I saw people looking at me, and if my inner state was in any way indicated on my outer envelope I wonder I wasn’t run in as a lunatic. In a quiet bypath in the Park I got a better hold on myself and tried to do some clear thinking. The first thing I had to do was to rule Barker out. Even if my fight was to give her to him I must fight; that I couldn’t do till we heard from Ford. Until then it was wisdom to say nothing, to keep my pose of a disinterested adherent of the theory of her innocence. If Ford’s story exculpated her she was out of the case forever. If it didn’t I couldn’t decide what I’d do till I heard where it placed her. It was a momentary deadlock with nothing for it but to wait. That I was prepared to do—go to Buffalo, get through my job there and come back. But I’d come back with my sword loose in its scabbard to do battle for my lady. CHAPTER XIV MOLLY TELLS THE STORY You can imagine after that disappointment in Philadelphia—it seems an unfeeling way to speak of the death of an old gentleman—how we all turned our eyes and kept them fixed on Tony Ford. Friday night Babbitts told me the hospital had reported he couldn’t be seen till Monday. The others were in a fever, he said, O’Mally smoking big black cigars by the gross and Jack Reddy gone off to Buffalo, and Mr. George that scared Ford would slip off some way he’d have liked to put a cordon of the National Guard round the hospital. Then came Saturday—and Gee! up everything burst different to what anybody had expected. It started with Mr. George. Being so nervous he couldn’t rest he called up the hospital in the morning and got word that there’d been a mistake in the message of the day before and that Mr. Ford was well enough to see the Philadelphia detectives that afternoon. Before midday Babbitts and O’Mally were gathered in, and while I was waiting on pins and needles in Ninety-fifth Street and Jack Reddy was off unsuspecting in Buffalo, the two of them were planted by Tony Ford’s bedside, hearing the story that lifted the Harland case one peg higher in its surprise and grewsomeness.