ine or even ten. These cold days
it isn't good for you----"

Lydia explained that she was not going to the office early in order to
please Mrs. Galton, who, as a matter of fact, did not arrive there
until late in the morning. The organization needed money desperately,
there was much to be done. But the truth was she loved the routine--the
hard impersonal work. It saved her from herself. She was almost happy.

Eleanor had evidently done what she had been asked to do, for O'Bannon
seemed to have dropped out of the world. His name was never mentioned,
and as week after week went by it seemed to Lydia that she herself was
forgetting him. Perhaps a time would come when she could even see him
without wrecking her peace of soul. Her only sorrow was the delay in
Evans' pardon. It didn't come. Lydia could not enjoy her liberty with
Evans in prison. The forms had all been complied with, but the governor
did not act. At last Mrs. Galton suggested her going to Albany; or
perhaps she knew someone who would have influence with the governor.
Yes, Lydia knew someone--Albee.

Albee was now senator from his own state, and a busy session in
Washington had kept him there. He had been among the first to telegraph
Lydia. She found his message and his flowers in the house when she first
came home. The message sounded as if it had come from a friend; but
Lydia knew that it had not; that Albee had escaped from her and her
influence, or thought he had. She had known it even in the days of her
trial, and looking back on the facts and on herself she wondered that
she had not resented it. Those were days in which she had awarded
punishments readily, and Albee had really behaved badly to her. They had
been very nearly engaged and yet the instant she was in trouble he had
deserted her. He had gone through all the motions of helping her, but in
spirit she knew that Albee the day she killed Drummond had begun to
disentangle himself. She felt not the least resentment against him; only
she recognized the fact that his remoteness from her made it more
difficult to make use of him for Evans, unless--the idea suddenly came
to her--it might make it easier. He would avoid seeing her if he could;
but if she found her way to him he might be eager to atone, to set
himself right by doing her a definite favor.

The evening of the day that she saw this clearly she took a train to
Washington. The next morning she was waiting in his outer office before
he reached