Then, his eyes professionally piercing, he remarked coolly, over his cigar, "There, that'll do, you've worked yourself up enough, you don't need to be theatrical! Your duty," said the Judge pompously, "is to drop all this poppy-cock about unfortunates, the under-dogs and gutter snipes, whom you affect. Be natural, be normal," said the Judge largely. "Go around with your kind and your own age, though, as far as I can see, they're as addle-pated as yourself. Drop all this nonsense, I say, and _don't see Colter again_--do you hear?" For the girl, now that he was out of the car, could turn her face from him. The Judge slowly fulminated, gradually bulged with authority. He seemed solemn even to himself as he laid down his final command. He took the cigar from his mouth. "Don't see Colter again!" His eyes, reading his daughter's, he was looking mercilessly on her young agony, making it naked and flaying it, saw the writhings of her as she took the lash. Sard made a slow desperate gesture; she had winced, half shrunk from him, but she seemed resolved now to meet the thing in its entirety. "I'm sorry," said the girl in a low voice, "I can't promise that. Last week, perhaps, but"--with a strange little sigh of inevitability, "not now, Dad. I'm sorry," Sard looked sadly into his face, "I can't promise." The Judge was stupefied. "Can't promise?" he queried. "Can't promise? But I gave you my orders! Do you realize what you're saying?" "Courage!" Shipman's low voice, pleading for human understanding, came to her. And another voice, the calm, thoughtful voice of Colter. She saw and recognized instantly her kinship with this soul that had come to her so strangely; she knew that she read it right and that no matter what its oblivion and dismay, it had come to her, belonged to her. Yet with all youth's insecurity and doubt she realized, too, that she could hardly trust herself. Her eyes widened, deepened; with a sudden strange, wild gesture she threw herself forward. Her arms went half-way about her father's neck. "Oh, help me," she begged, "help me! Don't you see that I can't promise? Oh, Father," wept Sard, "why should we two be like this?" It was perhaps the truest sign, had the girl but known it, of the depth of feeling that had been born in her. When a woman truly loves, her heart goes out to all those with whom she has a relationship under the great new trouble; for her there must be no small meanness, no stabbing dislikes, no impatience. When a woman truly loves, she is tender to the world. "I can't promise that," the girl wept desperately; "won't you help me, Dad?"