But he drew it back. A further clearer conception had come to him in that last instant to give him pause. What, after all, was he about to do? Himself aside, all that was dearest to him aside, was not the act he contemplated at bottom the murder of a principle, the betrayal of a trust that he held for the State? He was a public officer, who had taken oath in the presence of his associates worthily to execute the functions of his high office, to do justice and fear not. For him the sin of omission could be no less than the sin of commission. Would such a shifty suppression of his decision be one whit less a treason than the rendering of a mendacious one? Either equally besmirched his honour! Something deeper in him than dread of death, deeper even than his present fear of life, stirred and throbbed. No, whatever the outcome, no matter what it held for him and his, he must go through with it to the bitter end! He buried his face in his hands. As he sat thus stirless, the sense came to him of another presence in the room. Another's breath seemed to enwrap the place with feeling. He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. "Echo!" he cried and rose to his feet. [Illustration: He turned his head and saw the figure in the doorway. "Echo!" he cried, and rose to his feet] She came to him quickly, a little diffidently. "I couldn't help it, dear! I felt you--worrying, and I had to come." Suddenly her eyes fell on the revolver on the desk. She sprang and snatched at it in panic. "That! Oh, not that! Not that!" "I--it was in my drawer," he said. "Surely you--" "Ah," she cried. "I know! You--you received a letter this afternoon. It made you faint. You haven't been yourself since you read it. And now you--" He drew a shaking hand across his eyes. "No, dear," he said more steadily. "It would not have been--what you think. There was a moment when--but it has gone, and forever." He took the revolver from her hand, returned it to the drawer and locked it. "There," he said, "I give you the key. It will not happen now." There was in his wailing speech a kind of hopeless acquiescence and finality. Her heart was beating hard with a painful embarrassment. "Can you--can't you tell me what the letter was?" He looked at her palely, his features working. She would have to know soon enough, yet he shrank with a fastidious pain from telling her. What would she think of him? "Twenty years ago," he said, "when I was a young man, I wrote an--an unwise letter. It--it had to do with some one who died the year it was written, but whose memory I--I treasure. The threat is made now to publish it, and this would--would shame and harm that memory and me." "Some one who is dead?" she repeated bewildered. The picture her fancy had painted was fading out. "Then how--" "The old letter has fallen into unfriendly hands."