Almost the great danger was past! With his conviction and the passing of sentence upon him, the Judicial arm of the law would have delivered him to the Executive. Danger of publicity would be over, and Echo might be told the truth, without danger of recoil upon herself. A thousand times in his cell he had wondered how he should accomplish this. In some way it could be brought about--some safe and secret way--just how he would have leisure to decide. No one, not even Mason, his counsel, need be trusted with the significant secret that had such power to blast. She must be well instructed so that no false step could mar his plan. She must take no one into her confidence--must tell her story privately to the Governor, who had known her from her childhood. He was a just and discreet man and Harry did not doubt the outcome. His own story could supplement hers, and after a sufficient interval, executive pardon would quietly release him. He could step back into his old niche, and all would be as before. Even if Craig recovered, he would be powerless, since an accusation could not lie against a pardoned man, and Craig would not bring a charge that was at once bootless and incredible. Nor would he wreak an empty revenge upon Echo. He had once declared that he had not known the woman in the library, and, since she was lost to him in any case, he would not hazard a public reversal of his testimony that all would unite to call dastardly. The one thing Craig valued which men in the mass could give him, aside from power and money, was his place in the social sun, and he would not risk this. In the publication of the letter, or letters, that would have involved her father, he doubtless would not have been publicly known; in this matter he would run the gauntlet of popular southern opinion and would be well aware that the act would damn him. So Harry told himself. The real story would be buried, and the world--his world and Echo's--would never know! Thus he was thinking as he listened dully to the prosecutor's scathing _résumé_. His elbow was on the long table by which he sat, his brow in his hand, shielding his eyes from the sunlight that sent darting arrows across the cool, dim room as the windowshade waved in the light breeze. He could not see the door at the rear of the room swing open, nor the figure of the woman who entered--to pause, momentarily confused in the quick transition from the sunny Square to the shadow of the interior.