"We had nothing to do with his conscience, or with his private affairs--in themselves. All we asked was that we should not be called on to recognize a marriage which in our eyes was not a marriage. Everything that we could have done consistently with that position, my son and I may honestly say we have done." Sir Wilfrid Bury was called, to verify Marcia's written statement, and Mrs. Betts's letter was handed to the Coroner, who broke down in reading it. Coryston, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watched the countenances of the two Newburys while it was being read, with a frowning attention. When the evidence was over, and the jury had retired, Edward Newbury took his father to the carriage which was waiting. The old man, so thin and straight, from his small head and narrow shoulders to his childishly small feet, leaned upon his son's arm, and apparently saw nothing around him. A mostly silent throng lined the lane leading to the farm. Half-way stood the man who had come down to lecture on "Rational Marriage," surrounded by a group of Martover Socialists. From them rose a few hisses and groans as the Newburys passed. But other groups represented the Church Confraternities and clubs of the Newbury estate. Among them heads were quietly bared as the old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing currents of thought and life. Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went back himself to wait for the verdict. As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been held, Coryston emerged. Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely. Newbury began: "Will you take a message from me to your sister?" A man opened the door in front a little way. "Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back." The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury beside him. "One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!" Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his face, normally so charged--over-charged--with expression. "What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to discuss our differences, Coryston--" "Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white. "'Our differences,' as you call them, have led to _that_!" He turned and flung out a thin arm toward the annex to the laboratory, where the bodies were lying. "It is time, I think, that reasonable men should come to some understanding about 'differences' that can slay and madden a pair of poor hunted souls, as these have been slain!" "'Hunted?' What do you mean?" said Newbury, sternly, while his dark eyes took fire.