She leaned back in her chair, rather grandly, he felt. He regretted the touch of formality that was almost an irony in her speech. But he thought it best to let it pass,--they could get back to the old footing more quickly if they did it that way. "You’d never guess," he said. "I’ll not try. Tell me." "Gusta." "Gusta!" Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly, and Marriott thought that he had never before seen her so good to look upon; she was so virile, so alive. He noted her gray eyes, bright with interest and surprise, her brown hair, too soft to be confined in any conventional way, and worn as ever with a characteristic independence that recognized without succumbing to fashion. He fixed his eyes on her hands, white, strong, full of character. And he bemoaned the loss of those months; why, he wondered, had he been so absurd? "Gusta!" she repeated. "Where did you see Gusta?" "In prison." "What! No! Oh, Gordon!" she started with the shock, and Marriott found this attitude even more fascinating than the last; her various expressions changing swiftly, responding with instant sensitiveness to every new influence or suggestion, were all delightful. "What for? Tell me! Why don’t you tell me, Gordon? Why do you sit there?" Her eyes flashed a reproach at him--and he smiled. He was wholly at ease now. "For nothing. She’s done nothing. She went to see Archie, and the police, stupid and brutal as usual, detained her. That’s all; they placed the charge of suspicion against her to satisfy the law. The law!" He sneered out the word. Elizabeth had fallen back in her chair with an expression of pain. "Oh, Gordon!" she said with a shudder. "Isn’t it horrible, horrible!" "Horrible!" he echoed. "That poor Koerner family! What can the fates be about? You know--you know it all seems to come so near. Such things happen in the world, of course, every day the newspapers, the dreadful newspapers, are filled with them. But they never were real at all, because they never happened to people I knew. But this comes so near. Just think. I’ve seen that Archie Koerner, and he has spoken to me, and to think of him now, a murderer! Will--they hang him?" She leaned forward earnestly. "No," he said slowly. "They may electrocute him though--to use their barbarous word." "And now Gusta’s in prison!" Elizabeth went on, forgetting Archie. "But her message! You haven’t given me her message!" Marriott waited a moment, perhaps in his inability to forego the theatrical possibilities of the situation. "She wants you--to come to her." Elizabeth stared at him blankly. "To come to her?" "Yes." "In prison?" "Yes." Her brows contracted, her eyes winked rapidly. "But Gordon, how--how can I?"