Tom put his name to the bond, already signed by Mr. Driscoll, and stumbled out into the street, half blinded by the rush of sunlight into his cell-darkened eyes, and struck through with bewilderment at his unexpected liberation. He threw off a number of quizzing reporters, who had got quick news of his release, and walked several aimless blocks before he came back to his senses. Then he set out for Mr. Driscoll's office, almost choking with emotion at the prospect of meeting Ruth again. But he reached it too late to spend his thanks or to test his self-control. It was past six and the office was locked. He started home, and during the car ride posted himself upon his recent doings by reading the accounts of the trial and his part in the Avon outrage. On reaching the block in which he lived he hesitated long before he found the courage to go up to the ordeal of telling Maggie his last misfortune. When he entered his flat it was to find it empty. He sat down at the window, with its backyard view of clothes-lines and of fire-escape landings that were each an open-air pantry, and rehearsed the sentences with which he should break the news to her, his suspense mounting as the minutes passed. At length her key sounded in the lock, he heard her footsteps, then saw her dim shape come into the sitting-room. In the same instant she saw him at the window. "What--Tom!" she cried, with the tremulous relief of one who ends a great suspense. He had been nerving himself to face another mood than this. He was taken aback by the unexpected note in her voice--a sympathetic note he had not heard for such a time it seemed he had never heard it at all. He rose, embarrassed. "Yes," he said. She had come quickly to his side, and now caught his arm. "You are here, Tom?" "Why, yes," he answered, still dazed and at a loss. "Where have you been, Maggie?" Had the invading twilight not half blindfolded him, Tom could have seen the rapid change that took place in Maggie's face--the relief at finding him safe yielding to the stronger emotion beneath it. When she answered her voice was as of old. "Been? Where haven't I been? To the jail the last place." "To the jail?" He was again surprised. "Then ... you know all?" "Know all?" She laughed harshly, a tremolo beneath the harshness. "How could I help knowing all? The newsboys yelling down in the street! The neighbors coming in with their sympathy!" She did not tell him how to these visitors she had hotly defended his innocence. "I didn't know you were at the police station," he said weakly, still at a loss. "Of course not. When I got there they told me you'd been let out." Her breath was coming rapidly, deeply. "What a time I had! I didn't know how to get to the jail! Dragging myself all over town! Those awful papers everywhere! Everybody looking at me and guessing who I was! Oh, the disgrace! The disgrace!" "But, Maggie, I didn't do this!"