"I mean they would be more certain it was I who--" Eaton, as he blundered with the words and checked himself, looked up apprehensively at Avery; but Avery, if he had thought that it was worth while to let this conversation go on in the expectation that Eaton might let slip something which could be used against himself, now had lost that expectation. "Come, Harry," he said. Harriet arose, and Eaton got up as she did and stood as she went toward the door. "You said Mr. Avery and the conductor believe--" he began impulsively, in answer to the something within him which was urging him to know, to make certain, how far Harriet Santoine believed him to have been concerned in the attack upon her father. And suddenly he found that he did not need to ask. He knew; and with this sudden realization he all at once understood why she had not been convinced in spite of the conviction of the others--why, as, flushing and paling, she had just now talked with him, her manner had been a continual denial of the suspicion against him. To Avery and to Connery the attack upon Santoine was made a vital and important thing by the prominence of Santoine and their own responsibility toward him, but after all there was nothing surprising in there having been an attack. Even to Harriet Santoine it could not be a matter of surprise; she knew--she must know--that the father whom she loved and thought of as the best of men, could not have accomplished all he had done without making enemies; but she could conceive of an attack upon him being made only by some one roused to insane and unreasoning hate against him or by some agent wicked and vile enough to kill for profit. She could not conceive of its having been done by a man whom, little as she had known him, she had liked, with whom she had chatted and laughed upon terms of equality. The accusation of the second telegram had overwhelmed her for a time, and had driven her from the defense of him which she had made after he had admitted his connection with Gabriel Warden; but now, Eaton felt, the impulse in his favor had returned. She must have talked over with her father many times the matter of the man whom Warden had determined to befriend; and plainly she had become so satisfied that he deserved consideration rather than suspicion that Connery's identification of Eaton now was to his advantage. Harriet Santoine could not yet answer the accusation of the second telegram against him, but--in reason or out of reason--her feelings refused acceptance of it. It was her feelings that were controlling her now, as suddenly she faced him, flushed and with eyes suffused, waiting for the end of the sentence he could not finish. And as his gaze met hers, he realized that life--the life that held Harriet Santoine, however indefinite the interest might be that she had taken in him--was dearer to him than he had thought.