"Mercy!" she exclaimed; "how you can bring a thunderbolt crashing down out of a perfectly clear sky! Is it ever justifiable to shield criminals and criminality?" "That is just what I'm trying to find out," he persisted. "At the present moment I am shielding a good handful of open lawbreakers. Some of them know what I'm doing, and some of them don't. Those who know have been told that they must be good or I'll publish the evidence, and they've promised to be good if I won't publish it. At the time I didn't question my right to make such a bargain, but--" "But now you are questioning it? What would happen if you should tell what you know?" "Chaos," he replied briefly. "May I ask who is implicated?" "A good half of the corporation officials in the State, and some few outside of it." "Mercy!" she said again. And then: "It's too big for me, Evan. I can only go back to first principles and ask if it is ever justifiable to do evil that good may come." "If you put it that way, I've made myself _particeps criminis_," he said gravely. "I have given my word to keep still if the lawbreaking deals are broken off at once and in good faith. Beyond that, I can't help knowing that the exposure which I have threatened to make, and could make, would practically turn the people of this State into a mob." She was shaking her head determinedly. "I can't help you this time, Evan; truly I can't." Then, in sudden appeal: "Why won't you go to your father? He could tell you what to do and how to do it, and his judgment would be too big and just to stumble over the tangling little moralities." Blount smiled. "What if I should tell you that my father is more or less involved, Patricia? I don't know precisely how much or how little, but I am assured, by those who claim to know, that he, too, would go down in the general wreck." "I can't believe it!" she protested, in generous loyalty. "These people, whoever they are, are deceiving you to shelter themselves. Have you ever spoken to your father about this?" "Yes, once; one evening when we were dining together I told him what I had, and what use I should make of it if all other means should fail. Also, I advised him to dodge." "What did he say?" "That is the discouraging part of it. I was hoping against hope that he would tell me to go ahead; that he would say that he wasn't involved. But, as a matter of fact, he didn't say much of anything. I'm horribly afraid that his silence meant all that I've been trying to believe it didn't mean." She was slowly opening and closing her fan, as if she were trying to gain time. "I can only tell you again what I told you at first," she said at length. "You must be bigger than all these hampering circumstances; bigger than the little moralities, if need be. You can be, Evan; you've given splendid proof of it thus far, and I'm proud--just as proud as I can be--"