iffly alert as that of a bird dog when the quail
scent strikes into its nostrils.

"I've accepted all you had to give," she said with the manner of one in
the confessional, "and I never stopped to think that you might want
something more than I was giving." Still he waited and she hurriedly
talked on. "I must be honest with you. I owe you many debts, but that
comes first of all. I've tried to forget--tried with every particle of
resolution in me--but I can't. I still love him. I think I'll always
love him."

Tollman bowed. He made no impassioned protest and offered no reminder
that the man who still held her affection had proven himself an
apostate, but he said quietly. "I had hoped the scar was healed,
Conscience, for your own sake as well as mine. So long as I knew it hurt
you, I didn't speak."

For the first time in months tears started to her eyes and she felt
that she was wounding one who had practiced great self-sacrifice. He
spoke no more of his hopes until some time after the news came of
Stuart's participation in scandal.

At first Conscience instinctively refused that news credence, but in
many subtle and convincing ways corroboration drifted in and her father,
with his prosecutor's spirit, pieced the fragments together into an
unbroken pattern. Until this moment there had lurked in Conscience's
heart a faint ghost of hope that somehow the breach would be healed,
that Stuart would return. Now even the ghost was dead. She was sick,
unspeakably sick: with the heart-nausea of broken hope and broken faith.

Much of what she heard might be untrue, but it seemed established beyond
doubt that from her and from his early ideals--like the oath of Arthur's
knights--he had gone to careless living. He had played lightly with a
woman's honor and his own, and had not come out of the matter unsoiled.
Now nothing mattered much and if Tollman claimed the reward of his
faithfulness and her father would died happier for it why should she
refuse to consider them?

In these days the old man's urgency of Tollman's suit was rarely
silenced, but one afternoon he pitched it to a new key, and the girl's
habitual expression of weariness gave way to one of startled amazement.

"Of one phase of the matter," he said, "I have never spoken. I refrained
because Eben was unwilling that you should know, but justice is
justice--you should honor your benefactor."

"Honor my benefactor? I don't understand."

The old man shook his lion-l