"We have talked sometimes of the likeness of the everyday life to war," he continued. "In war men and women sometimes do or countenance things they know to be evil because they believe that by means of them there is accomplished some greater good; in peace, in life, men--and women--sometimes do the same. When the time comes that you comprehend what our actual relation is, I--I want you to know that I understand that whatever you have done was done because you believed it might bring about the greater good. I--I have seen in you--in your father--only kindness, high honor, sympathy. If I did not know--" She started, gazing at him; what he said had absolutely no meaning for her. "What is it that you know?" she demanded. He did not reply; his hand went out to hers, seized it, crushed it, and he started away. As he went up the stair--still, in his absorption, carrying cap and overcoat--she stood staring after him in perplexity. CHAPTER XVII THE FIGHT IN THE STUDY Eaton dismissed the man who had been waiting in his rooms for him; he locked the door and carefully drew down all the window-shades. Then he put his overcoat, folded as he had been carrying it under his arm, on the writing table in the center of the room, and from its folds and pockets took a "breast-drill" such as iron workers use in drilling steel, an automatic pistol with three clips of cartridges, an electric flashlight and a little bottle of nitroglycerine. He loaded the pistol and put it in his pocket; then he carefully inspected the other things. The room he was in, the largest of his suite, resembled Santoine's study on the floor below in the arrangement of its windows, though it was smaller than the study. The writing-desk in its center occupied much the position of Santoine's large desk; he moved it slightly to make the relative positions coincide. The couch against the end wall represented the position of the study's double doors. Eaton switched out the lights, and starting at the windows, he crossed the room in the darkness, avoiding the desk, and stopping a few feet to the right of the couch; here he flashed his light upon the wall at the height of the little wall-safe to the right of the doors in the study below. A dozen times he did this, passing from the windows to the position of the wall-safe and only momentarily flashing his light. He assured himself thus of being able to pass in the dark from the windows of Santoine's study to the wall-safe. As the study was larger than this room, he computed that he must add two steps to what he took here in each direction. He paid no attention to the position of the safe to the left of the doors, for he had kept watch of the vase on the table in the lower hall, and the only sign he had found there had told him that what he wanted was in the safe to the right.