"You'll probably hear from her tomorrow, and you'll laugh together over your fears of tonight. But if you take my advice, don't say anything outside, don't tell anyone. You're liable to set the gossips talking, and you never know when they'll stop. They might make it very unpleasant for you both. Miss Chrystie doesn't want her schoolgirl tricks magnified into scandals." She nodded, brows drawn low, her teeth set on her underlip. If he had convinced her of his innocence he saw he had not killed her anxieties. "Is there any way I can help you?" he hazarded. She shook her head. She had the appearance of having suddenly become oblivious to him--not finding him a culprit, she had brushed him aside as negligible. "Then you'll go home and give up troubling about it?" "I'll go home," she said, and with a deep sigh seemed to come back to the moment and his presence. Moving to the table she picked up the letter. Now that he was at ease, her face in its harassed care touched a vulnerable spot. He was sorry for her. "Don't take it so to heart, Miss Alston. I'm convinced it's going to turn out all right." She gave him a sharp, startled look. "Of course it is. If I thought it wasn't would I be standing here doing nothing?" She walked to the door, the small punctilio of good-bys ignored as she had ignored all thought of strangeness in being in that place at that hour. "I wish I could do something to ease your mind," he said, watching her receding back. "You can't," she answered and opened the door. "Have you a trap--something to take you home?" She passed through the doorway, throwing over her shoulder: "Yes, I've a cab--it's been waiting." In spite of his success he had, for a moment, a crestfallen sense of feeling small and contemptible. He watched her walk down the hall and then went to the window and saw her emerge from the street door, and enter the cab waiting at the curb.