She saw him fighting for a boy as she had seen him fight for her own husband; saw his stern face and iron gray head raised in its superb appeal to the pity and understanding of the so-called "good" who control the so-called "bad." Something surged up in the woman, a deep something that was a triumph and a shame. "_I could make this man happy_," her soul said. "I could make him happy!" Then into the strange quietude of a wife's memory, she withdrew even as she gave him her hand and eyes. She was a cold statue, a gracious being, a woman who had known. Pudge ran up. "Mother," the little blue figure shouted, "I've caught a butterfly. He wiggles his wings; he doesn't like it; he wants to get away." The man and woman smiled. They showed Pudge the meaning of wings, the reason things want to get away and in showing, they were tender of each other. When the little orange and black fans again wavered against the great wall, the blue vast of the morning sky, Pudge himself got the sense of your true liberator! "My, I like to let him go!" he breathed. He gazed a little wistfully after his silken-fanned treasure, insisting stoutly, "I like to let him go!" Pudge looked earnestly up into the two faces, smiling at him. "I want everything to go free," said Pudge, "except guinea pigs!" Watts waited a moment; then he took Eleanor's hand in both of his. He waited until she lifted her eyes to him. "I shall not come again," he said very gently, "until--you send for me." She was silent. "If I am ever to come," said the man, "send me only the message that you need me." He turned and was gone. CHAPTER XX EXPLOSIVE DUST Every place has its own peculiar odor, from the flower and candle-smoke scent of a graceful woman's sitting-room to the tarry ropes and fish-net and canvas sails of a boat-house; from the dried earth, rustling bulb and flower-seed smell of a tool bin to the paint tubes and mustiness of old draperies and cigarette smoke of an atelier. Sunning mattresses, hot milk bottles, warming squares and talcum powders, the delicious smell of bathed baby flesh; scent of wooden pews and velvet cushions, camphored furs and stale incense of a church: every department of life, every living thing, has its haunting, significant odor. A country court-room smells of unaired dust, of wet umbrellas and muddy rubbers, of onlookers who have handled horses and gasoline, of doctors who have come from operations. Smells of the coarse perfumes of the criminal's lady friends, the bay rum of the shining country lawyer, lemon peel and cloves chewed by such persons as even in the most stringent times of the Volstead Act appear always to have something to conceal.