When Mr. Verrinder left Marie Louise he took from her even the props of hostility. She had nothing to lean on now, nobody to fight with for life and reputation. She had only suspense and confusion. Agitated thoughts followed one another in waves across her soul--grief for her foster-father and mother, memory of their tendernesses, remorse for seeming to have deserted them in their last hours, remorse for having been the dupe of their schemes, and remorse for that remorse, grief at losing the lovable, troublesome children, creature distress at giving up the creature comforts of the luxurious home, the revulsion of her unfettered mind and her restless young body at the prospect of exchanging liberty and occupation for the half-death of an idle cell--a kind of coffin residence--fear of being executed as a spy, and fear of being released to drag herself through life with the ball and chain of guilt forever rolling and clanking at her feet. Verrinder's mind was hardly more at rest when he left her and walked to his rooms. He carried the regret of a protector of England who had bungled his task and let the wards of his suspicion break loose. The fault was not his, but he would never escape the reproach. He had no taste for taking revenge on the young woman. It would not salve his pride to visit on her pretty head the thwarted punishments due Sir Joseph and his consort in guilt. Besides, in spite of his cynicism, he had been touched by Marie Louise's sincerities. She proved them by the very contradictions of her testimony, with its history of keen intelligence alternating with curious blindness. He knew how people get themselves all tangled up in conflicting duties, how they let evils slide along, putting off till to-morrow the severing of the cords and the stepping forth with freedom from obligation. He knew that the very best people, being those who are most sensitive to gratitude and to other people's pains, are incessantly let in for complications that never involve selfish or self-righteous persons. As an executive of the law, he knew how many laws there are unwritten and implied that make obedience to the law an experiment in caddishness and ingratitude. There were reasons enough then to believe that Marie Louise had meant no harm and had not understood the evil in which she was so useful an accomplice. Even if she were guilty and her bewilderment feigned, her punishment would be untimely at this moment when the Americans who abhorred and distrusted Germany had just about persuaded the majority of their countrymen that the world would be intolerable if Germany triumphed, and that the only hope of defeating her tyranny lay in joining hands with England, France, and Italy.