"Oh, Archie! Archie! _Archie!_" She spoke his name this last time as if she must find relief by wringing her whole soul into it. Then she stood, biting her lip as if to stop its quivering. Archie, on his part, looked at her a moment, then at the floor. "Say you didn’t do it, Archie." "Do what?" "You know--" "You mean Kouka?" "Oh, no," she said, impatient with the question. "That Flanagan job?" She nodded rapidly. "Of course not; you ought to know that. Every one knows that--even the coppers." His sentence ended with a sneer cast in the officer’s direction. And Gusta sighed. "I’m so glad!" she said, her bosom rising and falling in relief. "They all said--" "Oh, that’s just the frame-up," said Archie. "They’d job me for it quick enough." He was sneering again at the officer, as incarnating the whole police system, and his face was darkened by a look of all hatred and malignity. The officer smiled calmly. "I’m so glad," Gusta was smiling now. "But--" she began. Her lip quivered; the tears started afresh. "What about the other?" "That was self-defense; he agitated me to it. But don’t let’s talk before that copper there--" He could not avert his look of hatred from the officer, whose face was darkening, as he plucked nervously at his mustache. "He’d say anything--that’s his business," Archie went on, unable to restrain himself. "Sh! Don’t, Archie!" Gusta said. "Don’t!" Archie drew in full breaths, inflating his white chest. The officer returned his look of hatred, his bronzed face had taken on a shade of green; the two men struggled silently, then controlled themselves. Gusta was trying again to choke down her sobs. "How’s father?" Archie asked, after a silence, striving for a commonplace tone. "He’s well,--I guess." "He knows, does he?" "I--don’t know." "What! Why--can’t you tell him? He could get down here, couldn’t he? He had a crutch when I was there." She was silent, her head drooped, the flowers in her hat brushed the bars at Archie’s face. She thrust the toe of a patent-leather boot between the bars at the bottom of the door. The tips of her gloved fingers touched the bars lightly; there was a slight odor of perfume in the entry-way. "You see," she said, "I--I can’t go out there--any more." Her tears were falling on the cement floor, falling beside the iron bucket in which was kept the water for the prisoners to drink. "Oh!" said Archie coldly. She looked up suddenly, read the meaning of his changed expression, and then she pressed her face against the bars tightly, and cried out: "Oh, Archie! Don’t! Don’t!" He was hard with her. "By God!" he said. "I don’t know why _you_ should have--oh, hell!" He whirled on his heel, as if he would go away. She clung to the bars, pressing her face against them, trying, as it were, to thrust her lips through them.