The stumbling, broken accents seemed to strike across the void. What if, instead of the great machine of recompense that he had distinguished in that prison experience, there were indeed a personal God, as Jubilee Jim believed, throned in his vast white heaven of glory--a God pitiful for the agony of his human creatures. Would he look down now and hear his cry for help? Harry flung himself suddenly on his knees, and leaned his forehead against the dark wainscoting. He knew that he uttered no word, but all his being seemed to resolve itself into an inarticulate cry for aidance. It was the first appeal of his life to something outside of himself, the first cry of human weakness, groping in its utter hopelessness for the Infinite. It was the last step of the long way Harry had travelled--from self-abasement to remorse and awakening conscience, through struggle with appetite to victory over himself, self-abnegation, acquiescence in the great law of retribution, and finally, in his despair, to prayer. And out of the deep to which he had called, calmness at length came to him, and with it a clear and steady purpose. As dawn took down the red draw-bars of the sky to let in the day, he threw open a shutter and stood looking down with aching eyes upon the drowsily-waking street. There should be no lying denial, no cowardly evasion--nothing less than the naked truth. If fate, if God, demanded this last thing of him--if only so could he balance the account--he would not repine. He had fought the fight, and at the last, so far as he could, he would keep the faith! Before the hotel had awakened, Harry was in his own apartment. He had left a note for Brent, who was to be in charge at the hotel suite, saying briefly that he should not appear that day, but would be with the Committee at eight o'clock. He had sent the same message also to Judge Allen. He told Suzuki to admit no one, disconnected his telephone, and thereafter remained at his desk writing, a plate of sandwiches at his elbow, bending himself to the final arrangement of the details of his personal affairs, as he might have done, he thought once, if by some clairvoyancy he foresaw that to-morrow he would die. Death, indeed, would have been a welcome solution if by it he could have bought extrication. Was he not going, living, to a worse death than he should ever die? As the mantel-clock struck seven, he laid the last written paper in the desk-drawer and rising, went into his dressing-room. He bathed and dressed, the last time in his life, he told himself, that he should don the evening habilaments of a gentleman--grave-clothes! For the blow would not be delayed. To-morrow, no doubt, the state would ring with his downfall. To-night--in the hour of his victory, if victory should be his--he would write _finis_ to the final chapter and surrender himself to the law.