fright, d'you think?" He shuddered. "Take him away, Waram, will you?
I've got work to do."

Suddenly Esther Levenson spoke in a flat voice, without emotion: "It
isn't true! He struck him with that silver statuette. Like this----"
She made a violent gesture with both arms. "And before God in heaven,
I'll make him pay for it. I will! I will! I will!"

"Keep still," I said sharply.

Grimshaw looked up at her. He made a gesture of surrender. Then he
smiled. "Simonetta," he said, "you are no better than the rest."

She sobbed, ran over to him, and went down on her knees, twisting her
arms about his waist. There was a look of distaste in Grimshaw's eyes;
he stared into her distraught face a moment, then he freed himself
from her arms and got to his feet.

"I think I'll telephone to Dagmar," he said.

But Waram shook his head. "I'll do that. I'm sorry, Grimshaw; the
police will have to know. While we're waiting for them, you might
write a letter to Mrs. Grimshaw. I'll see that she gets it in the
morning."

I don't remember whether the poet wrote to Dagmar then or not. But
surely you remember how she stayed by him during the trial--still
Victorian in her black gown and veil, mourning for the hope that was
dead, at least! You remember his imprisonment; the bitter invective of
his enemies; the defection of his followers; the dark scandals that
filled the newspapers, offended public taste, and destroyed Cecil
Grimshaw's popularity in an England that had worshipped him!

Esther Levenson lied to save him. That was the strangest thing of all.
She denied what she had told us that night of the tragedy. Tucker, she
said, had been in love with her; he followed her to Grimshaw's house
in Chelsea and quarrelled violently with the poet. His death was an
accident. Grimshaw had not touched the statuette. When he saw what had
happened, he telephoned to Doctor Waram and then lay down on the
couch--apparently fainted there, for he did not speak until Doctor
Fenton came. Waram perjured himself, too--for Dagmar's sake. He had
not, he swore, heard the actress speak of a silver statuette, or of
revenge before God.... And since there was nothing to prove how the
blow had been struck, save the deep dent in Tucker's forehead,
Grimshaw was set free.

He had been a year in prison. He drove away from the jail in a cab
with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old
symbol--a yellow chrysanthemum--a hiss went up that was li