He explained to her what the legal results might be in case the coroner's jury held him and others to the Grand Jury, as criminally liable for the disaster. Then, if the Grand Jury found a true bill against him, whenever he returned to Chicago he could be tried for manslaughter. But even if in his absence he should be held to the Grand Jury, there were many steps in the complex machinery of legal justice, and he could probably escape without trial. Evidently Wheeler, who knew the involutions of the district attorney's office, was counting on the probability that no one would be brought to trial in this hotel case,--that the disaster would be buried in that gulf of abortive justice where crimes against the people at large are smothered. "And in that case," Hart concluded, "there would be no use in letting them tear me to pieces in the papers!" "But you must go back!" she exclaimed, brushing aside his reasoning. "You must tell them all you know!" "Everett doesn't think so," he protested, "and I can't see the good of it, either. They won't do anything, probably. It's just politics, the whole investigation. But the newspapers are full of it just now, and they would hound me to a finish. It would be impossible for me to get work in Chicago for a long time, if ever again. And it would cover you and the boys with disgrace--that's the worst! I have paid enough!" "But it must be done," she repeated in a low voice. She was not clear what good might come of his testimony: she was ignorant of the legal conditions. But she had a fundamental sense of justice: men must pay for the evil they do,--pay fully and pay publicly. A private repentance and a private penance were to her incomplete and trivial. "I've got to earn our living," he urged. "You must think of that! If I am shut out of Chicago, we must begin somewhere else at the bottom." She was not ready yet to consider that question. "You mustn't think of us," she answered. "Francis, you can't really pay for all the wrong that has been done. But perhaps the truth will do some good. And unless you are ready to face the open disgrace,--why, you have done nothing! The money you gave back to the trustees was nothing. This is the only way!" It was the only way for him, at least. With his buoyant, pliant nature, as she understood it, some final act, definite, done in the eyes of the world that knew him, was needed to strengthen the fibre of his being, to record in his own soul its best resolve. For already he had begun to waver, to quibble with his repentance. He had been ready enough in the stress of his first feeling after the catastrophe to stand before the world and confess his share in the wrong that had been done. Then he was eager to free his mind of its intolerable burden. But now that the excitement had faded, leaving him to face the difficulties of his future, he saw in all its fatal detail what public disgrace would mean, and he drew back. It was folly to invite ruin!