's hands went out in a last appeal. "Send him to the Dentons;
they've had five years of experience for every year of Doctor Brainard's.
Please, please! Oh, don't you see?"

"Why should you care so much?" The words were off Peter's tongue before he
knew it. He would have given a good deal if he could have got them back.

The girl looked from him to Miss Maxwell. The question apparently
bewildered her. Then a hint of her old-time dignity and assurance
returned, coupled with her cryptic mood. "Plenty of reasons: he was Miss
Max's chief--she always worshiped him--your best friend, a most loved and
honored man in the profession. Isn't he? Well, this isn't the time or the
place for a risk."

The superintendent rose and looked down at the girl. When she spoke there
was a touch of annoyance in the tone as well as sadness. "And that's as
much--and as little--as you expect to tell us?"

Sheila nodded.

Miss Maxwell threw up her hands in a little gesture of helplessness.
"Leerie, Leerie, what are we going to do with you? It was this way even
three years ago."

In a flash the girl's arms were about the superintendent's neck, her face
buried on her shoulder; the words were barely audible to Peter, "Love me
and believe in me--as you did three years ago." And then a choking,
wet-eyed, and rather disheveled figure flew past him, out of the room.

Miss Maxwell sank back heavily into her chair; her face showed plainly her
battling between love for the girl, her sense of outraged discipline, and
her anxiety over the decision she must make. Peter watched her with a sort
of impersonal sympathy; the major part of his being had been plunged into
what seemed a veritable chasm of hopelessness. He tried to pull himself
together and realize that there was Dempsy to think about.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, at last.

"Do? You mean--about--?"

Peter nodded.

An almost pathetic smile crept into the superintendent's face. "As long as
you were here, anyway, it's rather a relief to be able to confess that I
don't know what to do. You see, superintendents are always supposed to
have infallible judgment on all matters," she sighed. "I have never but
once known Leerie to break a rule or ask for a special dispensation
without a reason--a good reason. But I don't understand what lies behind
all this."

"I do." Peter fairly roared it forth. "She loves that man, and she's
afraid this might ruin his career if--if anything happened. Why,