As he stepped inside his door and saw Ellen kneeling beside the cradle, her unheeding head being rumpled and battered by the uncertain hands of the baby, he wondered for a moment. Then he stepped over to her and lifted her to her feet, and then he saw her distorted, pain-tortured face, and there he learned, that in some way, she knew. There was only one way in which she could know. Even then he revealed an inherent fineness. He made no accusation. He said to her gently: “You felt that you would be needed? You followed me?” Ellen assented. Then he was speaking again. “You saw us? You heard what we said?” She bowed her head in acquiescence. Jason released her and dropped into the nearest chair, and Ellen sank down again beside the cradle and buried her face in the baby’s clothing. Finally, Jason could endure no more. He went over to Ellen and lifted her up; he helped her to a chair. With a halting voice and stricken eyes of misery she said to him: “Because you found that pocket book when you were fixing up the house, you thought that in some way she’d had it put there?” Jason nodded. In the passion of her agony, she cried at him: “How could you? Any one so delicate, so beautiful—why, I have always known she never could have done it! I couldn’t have loved her if I had thought her a common thief.” Before the storm of her wrath Jason stood bowed and helpless. She seemed a long way from him, and yet he could hear her voice crying at him: “You loved her. You would work for her, you would take care of her, but you had not the manhood to wait for her hour of vindication!” Then Jason spoke: “When I found the money hidden in her house, I thought there never could be such a thing as vindication. With my own hands I hid it where it never would have been discovered, waiting for the hour when she should come to me and tell me herself that she had taken it.” Ellen cried to him: “And now, what are you going to do?” He looked at her helplessly. The finger she was pointing toward the cradle was shaking but her voice was clear: “You are giving her your love. You have given me your child. What are you going to do?” So these two souls battled in agony during an evening of that tense stillness which almost always presages heavy storm in the Central States. The elements outside seemed in keeping with the inside strain when a sudden wind sprang up and boiling yellow clouds were driven before it, and heavy black ones took their place. In a short time their world was enveloped in thick darkness, broken by the flash of lightning, the jarring of thunder and dangerous winds.