Indeed, this great craving had always remained unformulated, unidentified, until that time, years and years ago, when she first saw the baby of Aurora Lane lifting up its hands to her. So she had become one-half a mother, at the least. He was half her boy, at least, he who now lay in prison. A woman is a coward as to revealing her love for her chosen mate--she will conceal that, deny that, to the death. But for the child her love is different--then she becomes bold--she will defy all the world--will force herself even into situations otherwise unthinkable. Except for her love for Don Lane, the fatherless, Miss Julia would never have undertaken to find a father for him. But that child had a father! Each must have. Ah! how must the angels have wept over that piteous spectacle of Miss Julia in her own room, looking smilingly at the face she saw pictured here in her own hand--the face of one whom she held to be a great man, a noble man, a man good, just, wise, one with love and kindness in his heart as well as brawn and brains in his physical self. Yes, there was a father.... And he was perfect, heroic, for her; her love being thus much blessed by that divine blindness love works within us all. Now, the face which Miss Julia saw in her boudoir, the face which she saw framed upon the wall of her library room, was the same which she saw now close at hand! She started, flushed, trembled, finding difference between a picture and a man. Judge Henderson was urbane, as always with a woman. He led her to a seat, taking pains to turn on another clip of the electric light, which Miss Julia suddenly wished he had not done, since now she was most sensible of her uncontrollable blushes. Yes, it was a great adventure! She had never before been alone with him--not in all her life. She had never been this close to him before. It was somewhat cruel now; but the angels have their ways of being cruel with us at times. "Miss Julia," he began with an extra unctuousness in his tones, "Miss Julia, my dear girl, I surely am delighted to see you here. You have never before been here, I am persuaded--this is the first time in all our long and pleasant acquaintance. If ever in the past I have been able to be of service to you----" In any conversation Judge Henderson was sure to bring the talk around to himself, to his own deeds, his own ambitions. His was an egotism so extreme as to be almost beyond accountability--he was a moron not in mentality but in sense of proportion. He could not have put two square blocks together if one of these blocks had to do with the interest of another but himself. There are such men, and at times they go far.