e couldn't. She came in, and closing the door
behind her she leaned against the handle.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Dan," she said, "but I must talk to you about
Lydia Thorne."

"Miss Thorne's friends are doing everything they can to prevent the
preparation of a case against her. They take all my time in interviews,"
he answered.

"Who else has been here?" asked Eleanor with a sinking heart.

"Oh, Bobby Dorset has been here. That interview was brief."

"And Governor Albee?"

O'Bannon looked at her with eyes that suddenly flared up like torches.

"Yes, the old fox," he said.

There was a pause during which Eleanor did not say a word, but her whole
being, body and mind, was a question; and O'Bannon, though he had become
this strange, hostile creature, was yet enough her old friend to answer
it.

"If you have any influence with Miss Thorne tell her to keep politics
out of it--to get a good lawyer and to prepare a good case."

Eleanor saw that Albee's mission had failed. She would have rejoiced at
this, except that the hostility of O'Bannon's manner hurt her beyond the
power of rejoicing. She was not like Lydia--stimulated by enmity. She
felt wounded and chilled by it. She told herself, as women always do in
these circumstances, that there was nothing personal about his
attitude, but there was something terribly personal in her not being
able to change his black mood.

"She has a good lawyer--Wiley. Who can be better than Wiley?" she asked.

"He's often successful, I believe."

He began snapping out the light over the desk--a hint not too subtle.
Eleanor started twice to say that most people believed that no jury
would convict a girl like Lydia, but every phrase she thought of sounded
like a challenge. They went downstairs. Ordinarily he would have offered
to drive her home, although her own car was waiting for her. Now he took
off his soft hat and was actually turning away when she caught him by
the sleeve. His arm remained limp, almost humanly sulky, in her grasp.

"I've never known you like this before, Dan," she said.

"You must do me the justice to say," he answered, "that lately I have
done my best to keep out of your way."

Eleanor dropped his arm and he started to move away.

"Tell me one thing," she said. "The grand jury will indict her?"

"It will."

She nodded.

"That is what Mr. Wiley thinks."

"And he also thinks, I suppose," said O'Bannon, "that no jury will
convict her?"

"And what