The jury retired for about ten minutes. When they returned they pronounced the prisoner Not Guilty. The verdict was received with cheers. When a man has stood on trial for his life the tension of feeling is sufficiently strained to cause a strong reaction on his acquittal in favour of the accused. Van Bleit left the court with his friends, and Smythe, who was as much astonished as relieved at the turn affairs had taken, drove him home to his wife as the surest proof he could offer her that her cousin was a free man. "I don't know how he does it," he confided in Van Bleit's counsel, who was a personal friend, and whose fee he was responsible for. "I take it, he's reserved for something worse than hanging." The strain had told on Van Bleit. He had recognised that he stood in a particularly tight place. Death had been his constant companion sleeping and waking for so long that his nerve was shattered for the time. Excitement had kept him up hitherto, now that the necessity to brace himself was ended he collapsed like a deflated paper bag. When he got alone with his cousin he gave way and blubbered feebly as a child blubbers who has been beaten and desires to but cannot retaliate. Mrs Smythe was shocked. She pressed whisky on him with a heart overflowing with pity, and he helped himself liberally from the decanter until his lachrymose condition gave place to a bombastic assurance that was almost as pitiful to witness. Mrs Smythe sent her husband off to his club, unmindful that he should encounter Karl in his present mood, and she and her cousin dined alone. "We'll have a nice quiet time together," she said gently. "You'll sleep here to-night, Karl?" "I might as well--yes," he replied. He got up, wandered aimlessly round the room, and then came back, put his arms round her shoulders and kissed her. "You haven't told me anything about Her yet," he said. "Has she been upset? ... anxious? ... I've thought about her day and night." Mrs Smythe looked troubled. "You mean--Zoe?" He stared at her in surprise. "Why, who else?" he asked. "She has been with me a lot," she answered evasively. "She's very kind, Karl--so sympathetic." "Of course she didn't believe me guilty?" he questioned, his bold dark eyes holding hers, confident in the remembrance of his last interview with Mrs Lawless that she could not have thought unkindly of him in the interval. "I don't know... She never spoke of you," Mrs Smythe returned unwillingly. "Zoe is very reserved." He smiled with some complacence. "She won't be reserved with me," he said, "when I see her to-morrow. I'm living for to-morrow. I would have gone to her this evening only--" He hesitated to complete the sentence, but Mrs Smythe understood. "I think it just as well not to be too precipitate," she said. Something in her manner arrested him. He glanced at her sharply. "You don't know... you haven't heard anything?" he stammered.