It was a peculiarly difficult situation; arising from causes simple enough in themselves when taken separately, but extraordinarily complicated when considered together. Stephanie, Gladys, Lorraine, Amherst, Porshinger, Dolittle and himself--everyone a party acting independently, so to speak, yet in effect acting together to attain the present embarrassing condition. Naturally a woman was at the bottom of it--she always is in such matters--and she would be the one to suffer for all their foolishnesses and mistakes. Stephanie would be pilloried because Porshinger and Dolittle and he himself had acted the cad--one by nature, one because he was a malicious gossip, and one because he was a natural born damn fool. The last was quite the most to blame because he should and ought to have known better. The more he pondered the situation, the more hopeless it became. Amherst was out of it now except as an original cause. Lorraine was only in it by right, and out of it on every other basis. Dolittle was in it by reason of his disposition to meddle in the affairs of others; but Porshinger and he were in it because they were guilty against Stephanie. Technically Lorraine had a perfect right to prosecute Porshinger--and Porshinger deserved to be prosecuted--but what of himself? Who was the more guilty of the two? He had betrayed an implied trust. It mattered not if Stephanie loved him--it mattered not that she had no reproaches for him; he was guilty none the less, and had only complicated the matter for her, for Porshinger had seen them--or at least he knew. And Stephanie, the innocent cause of it all--of his and Porshinger's audaciousness--was to be the real victim because of Dolittle's babbling tongue and Lorraine's misdirected energy. The whole thing, however, came back to Dolittle, so far as the present complication was concerned. If he had not seen--or had been blind though seeing--it would never have arisen. However, none of these matters confronted them now. There was small profit in searching for causes, or for whom to blame. Their business was to meet a present condition in the best way possible--and there appeared to be no best. All were equally bad. The more he thought over it, the more hopeless it all was and the more futile every effort to save Stephanie. She was bound to be smirched, take it whatever way one would. If the prosecution was abandoned, then Dolittle's story would be believed no matter how she treated Porshinger in the future. If the prosecution was persisted in, then Porshinger's story of the willing victim had to be met by Stephanie's story of violence--all the nasty details threshed out for an eager populace--with Stephanie the real defendant with all to lose and nothing to gain.--And if Porshinger dragged him into it, by telling what he saw on the Criss-Cross piazza, the verdict would scarcely be in doubt and the----