"You acknowledge this----" the notary began. But at the moment Cassy returned and, it may be, distracted by her, he mumbled the rest, took the reply for granted, applied the stamp, exhibited his teeth. Then, at once, the hall had him. Cassy turned to Jones. Her face disclosed as many emotions as an opal has colours. Relief, longing, uncertainty, and distress were there, ringed in beauty. "Miss Austen ought to know how she has misjudged him. Do you suppose she would let me see her?" Bully for you! thought Jones, who said: "I cannot imagine any one refusing you anything." In speaking, he heard something. Cassy turned. She too had heard it. But what? With a cry she ran to the sofa. "Daddy!" His face was grey, the grey that dawn has, the grey than which there is nothing greyer and yet in which there is light. That light was there. His upper-lip was just a little raised. It was as though he had seen something that pleased him and of which he was about to tell. "Daddy!" Jones followed her. He drew down the rug and bent over. After a moment, he drew the rug up, well up, and, with a forefinger, saluted. Cassy, tearing the covering back, flung herself there. Jones could not see her tears. He heard them. Her slim body shook. XXXI On leaving the walk-up Jones discovered a restaurant that he judged convenient and vile. But the convenience appealed, and the villainy of the place did not extend to the telephone-book, which was the first thing he ordered. While waiting for it, it occurred to him that in a novel the death he had witnessed would seem very pat. Why is life so artificial? he wonderingly asked. The query suggested another. It concerned not the decedent but his daughter. By the Lord Harry, he told himself, her linen shall not be washed in public if I can prevent it, and what is the use in being a novelist if you can't invent? But now the book was before him. In it he found that Dunwoodie resided near Columbia University. It was ages since he had ventured in that neighbourhood, which, when finally he got there, gave him the agreeable sensation of being in a city other than New York. Hic Labor, Haec Quies, he saw written on the statue of a tall maiden, and though, in New York, quiet is to be had only in the infrequent cemeteries, deep down, yet with the rest of the inscription he had been engaged all day. Gravely saluting the maiden, who was but partly false, he passed on to an apartment-house and to Dunwoodie's door, which was opened by Dunwoodie himself. In slippers and a tattered gown, he was Hogarthian. "I thought it a messenger!" he bitterly exclaimed. Jones smiled at him. "When a man of your eminence is not wrong, he is invariably right. I am a messenger." In the voice of an ogre, Dunwoodie took it up. "What is the message, sir?" Jones pointed at the ceiling. Involuntarily, Dunwoodie looked up and then angrily at the novelist. "An order of release," the latter announced.