Such was her explanation of his absence. She pitied him with a warm romantic pity for his renunciation. Held away by such a reason, she knew that if ever he came it must be at her bidding. At times she had been impelled to send for him to come. To her this was not an impulse of prohibitive unmaidenliness; she could bend to a man who thought himself beneath her as she never could to a man on her own level. But she had not sent. To do so without being prepared to give him what he desired would be to do him a great wrong, and to give him this she was neither able nor ready. She admired all that was good in him; but she could not blind her eyes to his shortcomings, and to go into his world, with its easily imagined coarseness, with its ignorance of books and music and painting, and all the little refinements that were dear to her, she could not. And yet her heart had ached that he had not come. But now as she read the story of his disgrace, and as the reflux of wits and strength began, all her heart was one protest of his innocence, and she forgot all the little differences that had before halted her desire to see him; and this desire, freed of its checks, suddenly expanded till it filled the uttermost recesses of her soul. Her first impulse, when she had reached the story's end, was to go straight to him, and she went so far as to put on her hat. But reason stopped her at the door. She could do him no good, and her call would be but an embarrassment to them both. She removed her hat, and sat down to surging thoughts. She was sitting at her desk, white and weak, reading anew the lurid story in the paper, when Mr. Driscoll passed through her room into his office with hat drawn over his eyes. She looked through his open door for several minutes--and then, obeying the desire for the relief of speech, she went in. "Did you see this article about Mr. Keating?" she asked, trying to keep her personal interest in Tom from showing in her voice. Mr. Driscoll's hat brim was still over his eyes. He did not look up. "Yes," he said gruffly. "You remember him, don't you?--one of the foremen?" The hat brim moved affirmatively. She had to summon all her strength to put her next question with calmness. "What will be done with him?" "I don't know. Blowing up buildings isn't a very innocent amusement." "But he didn't do it!" "He didn't? Hum!" Ruth burned to make a hot defense. But instead she asked: "Do you think he's the sort of a man to do a thing of that sort? He says he didn't." "What d'you suppose he'd say?" She checked her rising wrath. "But what do you think will be done with him?" "Hung," growled Mr. Driscoll. She glared at him, but his hat brim shielded off her resentment; and without another word she swept indignantly out of the room.