He glanced at his watch. He could start now. He hurried from the building, but there was no point in haste. He had plenty of time, too much time; and Betty hadn't said he would see Sylvia; hadn't given him time to ask; but she must have arranged an interview, else why should she care to see him at all, why her manner of a conspirator? He reached the rendezvous well ahead of time, but he recognized Betty's car just beyond the corner, and saw her wave to him anxiously. He stepped in and sat at her side. She laughed nervously. "I guessed you would be a little ahead," she said as the car commenced to crawl north. "Am I to see Sylvia?" Betty nodded. "Just once. This noon, before I telephoned, she acknowledged that she wanted to see you--to talk to you for the last time. That's the way she put it." Betty smiled sceptically. "You know I don't believe anything of the sort." "What do you think can be done?" George asked. She didn't suggest anything, merely repeating her faith, going on while she looked at George curiously. "So all the time, George--and I didn't really guess, but I might have known you would. I can remember now that day at Princeton when I asked you about her dog, and your anxiety one night at Josiah's when you wanted to know if she was going to be married--oh, plenty of hints now. George! Why did you let it go so far?" "Couldn't help myself, Betty." She looked at him helplessly. "And what have you done to her?" "If you can't guess----" George said. Betty smiled reminiscently. "Perhaps I can guess. You would do just that, George, when there was nothing else." "You don't blame me?" he asked. "You don't ask, as Lambert did, why I waited so long?" She shook her head. "I'm sure," she said, "when you came last night you saw a Sylvia none of us had ever met before. Don't you think it had come upon her all at once that she was no longer Sylvia Planter, that in defeating you she had destroyed herself? If that is so, she has every bit of sympathy I'm capable of, and we must think first of all of her. The pride's still there, but quite a different thing. She's never known fear before, George, and now she's afraid, terribly afraid, most of all, I think, of herself." George counted the corners, was relieved when beyond Fiftieth Street the traffic thinned and they went faster. He took Betty's hand, and found that the touch steadied and encouraged, because at last her fingers seemed to reach his mind again. "Betty! Do you think she cares at all?" "I'm prejudiced," Betty laughed, "but I think the harder she'd been the more she's cared; but she wouldn't talk about you except to say she would see you for a minute this once. Lambert's lunching with Dolly." "We are conspirators," George said, "and I don't like it, but I must see her once." They drew up at the curb, got out, and entered the hall. The house was peculiarly without sound. George glanced at the entrance to the room where he had found Sylvia last night.