"And it must come back to hurt you--to spoil your life now! Something written before I was born! It sha'n't! It sha'n't!" She spoke with passionate abandon, her words struck out like fire from flint, from the horror of the knowledge that had sprung to her at sight of the gleaming thing at which she had snatched. "But you can pay the price, no matter how much it is! Take my pearls--my rings--my gowns." He shook his head. "It's not money: what I am asked to pay is my honour. I am required to alter my judicial decision on the Welles-Scott case ... to hand down a legal lie." She looked at him with parted lips. "The Welles-Scott case!" "Yes. Much hangs on this decision. The great corporate interests--but you would not understand." She threw herself beside his chair and knelt close to him. A great compassion was welling up in her, mingling itself with deep anger at the cowardly attack upon him. She had known of such conscienceless warfare in political life--acts of "character assassins" which knew neither pity nor honourable scruple. "Who has the letter?" she asked. "Cameron Craig. It came with his card." She started violently. Cameron Craig! He who had once asked her to marry him, who had asserted his love for her--he, now bent on her father's ruin! She had a darting memory of that heavy, ruthless jaw, those lowering, determined eyes. Cameron Craig? She lifted a stricken face. "You see!" he said. "I remember you once said to me that he was not 'one of us.' He isn't. That is why I know that he will stop at nothing. He will do what he threatens. There is no way out." She rose to her feet. Her heart was beating so that her breath came with difficulty and a mist was before her eyes. "You will hand down the decision." It was a statement, not a question. "God help me--I must!" "When?" "A week from to-day, as I have announced." She leaned and put her arm about his neck, the key of the drawer still clenched in her cold hand, and kissed him on the forehead. Even in that numb moment she felt a certain pride that he, who had known a passing weakness, was yet, in this crucial moment, so strong. "You must go back to bed now," he said, heavily. "You are going to your aunt's to-morrow, aren't you?" She nodded, her cheek still against his. "I shall take the early train, before you are up. But I shall be back next day." She withdrew her arms. "Good night," she half-whispered, then looked at the locked drawer. "You will not--you will not--" "I promise," he said. "Whatever happens?" "Whatever happens." An instant later she was gone. CHAPTER XV THE ONLY WAY