"Don't talk so," she implored and slid off the sofa to her feet. "They'll hear you in the next room. I can't afford to let this get around." For the first time in her knowledge of him he was deaf to the claims of her welfare. "Who is this fancy gentleman?" he cried. "Where is he?" "Oh, why did I tell you?" she wailed. "What got into me to tell you! I can't fight with you--I won't let you go to him. There's no use--it's all over, it's done, it's ended. _Can't_ you see?" He made no answer and she went to him, catching at his arm and shoulder, staring, desperately pleading, into his face. "You talk like a fool," he said, pushing her away. "This is my job. Where is he?" As she had said, she was unable to fight with him. Her enfeebled body was empty of all resistant force. Now, as she clung to him, she felt its sickly weakness, its drained energies. She wanted peace, the sofa again, the swaying walls to steady, the angry man to be her father, quiet in the armchair. She forgot her promise to Crowder, her pledged word, everything, but that there was a way to end the racking scene. Holding to the hand that thrust her aside she said softly: "There's a punishment coming to him that's better than anything _you_ can give." His glance shifted to hers, arrested. "What you mean?" "He's done something worse than the way he's treated me--something the law can get him for." "What?" "Sit down quiet here and I'll tell you." She pointed to the overturned chair and made a step toward the sofa. He remained motionless, watching her with somberly doubting eyes. "It's true," she said; "every word. It comes from Charlie Crowder. When you hear it you'll see, and you'll see too that you'll only mix things up by butting in. They're getting their net ready for him, and they'll have him in it before the week's out." This time the words had their effect. He picked up the chair and brought it to the sofa. She sat there erect, her legs curled up beside her, and told him the story of Boye Mayer and the stolen money. The light was behind him and against it she saw him as a formless shape, the high, rounded back of the chair projecting above his head. The silence with which he listened she set down to interest, and feeling that she had gained his attention, that his wrath was appeased by this unexpected retribution, her own interest grew and the narrative flowed from her lips, fluent, complete, full of enlightening detail. Once or twice at the start he had stirred, the rickety chair creaking under his weight. Then, slouched against its back, he had settled into absolute stillness. To anyone not seeing him, it might have seemed that the girl was talking to herself, pauses that she made for comment passed in silence, questions she now and then put remained unanswered. Peering at him she made him out, a brooding mass, his chin sunk into his collar, his hands clasped over his waist, his eyes fixed on the floor.