Eldridge filled in the paper before him and laid a blotter across it. “That is sufficient. I will file the application to-morrow. There will be no trouble. She will not contest it--?” The man swallowed a little. “No--She wants--to be free--” He ended the words defiantly, but with a kind of shame. Eldridge made no reply. He was seeing a quiet figure, with bent head, smiling at something--something that shut him out. He looked across to the man. The man’s eyes met his. “That’s all you need--is it?” He seemed a little disappointed. “No more to it than this?” “That’s all,” said Eldridge. But the man did not get up. “I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “You see, I never guessed--not till two weeks--ten days ago or so.” “I see--” “I’d always trusted Cordelia--I hadn’t ever thought as she could do anything like that--not _my_ wife!” “One doesn’t usually expect it of one’s--own wife.” Eldridge laughed a little, but it was not unkindly, and the man seemed to draw toward him. “I’ve never mentioned it--except to that detective, and I didn’t tell him--any more than I had to--He didn’t seem to need much telling--” he said dryly. “He seemed to sense just about what had been going on--without telling.” “Yes--?” Eldridge was looking thoughtfully into the greyish-black beard with the round lump in it. “He’s got the facts. It took him just two weeks--to get ’em.” His hand motioned toward the letters, but there was something in the face--a kind of puffy appeal. Eldridge nodded. “They know what to do,” he said quietly. “I hadn’t even mistrusted,” said the man. His eyes were looking at something that Eldridge could not see--something that seemed to come from a faint perfume in the room.... “I can see it plain enough now--looking back.... You don’t mind my telling you--a little--about it.” Eldridge shook his head. The man seemed a kind of lumbering boy, yet he was a shrewd, keen man in business. “It might help--you know--” he said. “I thought you’d ask me, probably--I’d kind of planned to tell you, I guess.” He laughed a little awkwardly. “Go ahead,” said Eldridge. “He was _my_ friend, you see. And I brought him home with me and made ’em friends.... I can see now, looking back, what a fool I was--about it. But I didn’t see it--then. I don’t know now what it was about him.... He’s old as I be--and I’ve got the money. I can give her everything she wants--more than he can. But I know now that from the first day she see him she was curious about him.... I’d brought him home to dinner one night--It was just after we were married.... I always kind of think of him that night--the way he looked at table--he’s tall--You know him--?” Eldridge nodded. He was seeing the tall, distinguished figure--and beside it a humped-up one across his desk.