"The question proves my point. The findings of that committee are buried away in bulky volumes that nobody sees, while the world is fed half on fiction and half on lies." "Why don't the newspapers tell us what's in those bulky volumes?" "Because," he said, with ineffable dejection, as if trying to answer a question that he knew he could not answer, "it wouldn't be interesting--and it wouldn't pay." "Must everything in a newspaper _pay_?" she demanded. "That's what newspapers are run for," he said sadly. "They've got to pay--pay--always to pay...." His voice trailed off into a whisper, and he sat silent. She tried to win him back to the theme upon which he had talked so earnestly, and which had stirred her more than she realised. But as if fearful that he had not been understood, he proved obdurate. Finally he rose and held out his hand. "I must say good night and good-bye, Miss Wynrod. I will not see you in the morning. I must take the early train. It was good of you to ask me out to-night. I'm sorry I couldn't seem more--more--appreciative." A thought flashed across her mind as they walked slowly back to the house. "You will come and see me--occasionally?" she asked, as they stood on the terrace. "Why should you want me to?" he said quizzically, looking at her in a curiously searching way. "Because--because--well...." she floundered, unable to put in words precisely what she felt. "Because I tell you things?" he put in for her. That clarified her answer. "No," she said thoughtfully. "Because you say things I've only thought. You see, I've read more than most people give me credit for," she added somewhat irrelevantly. He studied her from beneath his heavy eyebrows. "Keep on, my friend," he said very slowly. "Keep on thinking. And then ... act. There are great deeds before you--noble, shining deeds ... if you'll only do them. Yes, some day I shall come again, and we shall talk further upon these matters ... and then--perhaps--who knows what may come of it?" He finished dreamily. As he took her hand and held it, she sensed a tender smile upon his lips, and a half uttered question in his eyes. But he said no word. He was almost out of sight in the darkness when a thought flashed across her mind. She called him back. "Mr. Good ... why didn't Roger drink anything to-night? Have you any idea?" "Yes," he said simply. "I told him ... what it did to me." CHAPTER V A SLEEPER WAKES With the first frost Judith closed her house at Braeburn and returned to the city. For a little while she rested quietly, recovering from the strenuous gaieties of the summer. Her friends--particularly the men--smiled when she said that she never had a vacation: but that was literally true. The demands upon her time were far more rigorous than were those of any business man of her acquaintance. In the conventional significance of the word her life was hardly toilsome, but it was none the less most arduously occupied.