ly I took it," said Jeffrey, smiling at Alston broadly. He was
amused now, little more. He saw how his background of wholesale thievery
would serve him in the general eye. Not old Alston's. He did not think
for a moment Alston would believe him, but it seemed more or less of a
grim joke to ask him to. "Don't you know," he said, "I'm an ex-convict?
Once a jailbird, always a jailbird. Remember your novels, Choate. You
know more about 'em than you do about law anyway."

Then he saw, with a shock, that Alston really did believe him. He also
knew at the same instant why. Esther was pouring the unspoken flood of
her persuasion upon him. Jeff could almost feel the whiff and wind of
the temperamental rush. He knew how Esther's belief set upon you like an
army with banners when she wanted you also to believe. And still he held
the little crumpled packet in his hand.

"Will you open it?" Alston asked him, with a gentleness of courtesy that
indicated he was sorry indeed, and Jeffrey laid it on the table,
unrolled the paper and let the bauble lie there drinking in the light
and throwing it off again a million times enhanced. Alston advanced to
it and gravely looked down upon it without touching it. Madame Beattie
turned upon it a cursory gaze, and gave a nod that seemed to accept its
identity. But Esther did not look at all. She put her hand on the table
to sustain herself, and her burning eyes never once left Alston's face.
He looked round at her.

"Is this it?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," said Esther.

She seemed to ask how a woman could doubt the identity of a trinket she
had clasped about her neck a thousand times, and pored over while it lay
in some hidden nest.

"Ask her," said Madame Beattie, in her tiniest lisp, "if the necklace is
hers."

There flashed into Alston Choate's mind the picture of Lydia, as she
came to his office that day in the early summer, to bring her childish
accusation against Esther. The incident had been neatly pigeonholed, but
only as it affected Anne. It could not affect Esther, he had known then,
with a leap at certainty measured by his belief in her. The belief had
been big enough to offset all possible evidence.

"Ask her," said Madame Beattie, with relish, "where she got it."

When Esther had cried a little at the beginning of the interview, the
low lamenting had moved him beyond hope of endurance, and he had
wondered what he could do if she kept on