ernoon when Jasper Fay was acquitted she could look back
over the preceding seven or eight months and see how relatively easy all
had been. She said relatively easy for the reason that much had of
necessity been hard. The distinction she made was that what had been
hard would have been overwhelming had she not taken the principle of
immediate salvation, where it could be brought about, as law. By meeting
each minute's need with the utmost of her strength she found the next
minute's need less terrible. By allowing no one to suffer a shade more,
or an instant longer, than she could help, she perceived a lessening of
the strain all round. With the lessening of the strain it was easier to
calm passions and disarm antipathies. If she could say nothing else for
her substitute for love, she was obliged to admit that it worked.

She was thinking so with a great thankfulness when Thor came to tell her
of the rendering of the verdict. Though he had telephoned the fact, he
was eager to give her the details face to face. He did this while they
stood in the tapestried square hall, avoiding each other's eyes.

It had not been picturesque, he explained to her; but it had been
satisfactory. Though an hour had sufficed the jury to reach their
decision, the farmers and market-gardeners who had formed the mass of
the spectators had forestalled it and scattered to their homes. The
dramatic interest was over; it was generally felt that no more than a
formality remained. When for the last time Jasper Fay was led in to
confront his peers it was before a comparatively empty court.

Because he had suddenly become self-conscious, Thor went on with his
account stammeringly and with curious hesitations. Still wearing his fur
motoring-coat, he held his cap in his hand, like a man in a hurry to get
away.

"I couldn't see even then--at the very end--that the old fellow knew
what it was all about. He looked round him with the same glassy stare
that he's had ever since--ever since that morning when we gave him the
coffee. Mind all gone, poor old chap--and perhaps it's just as well. He
smiled a bit when it was all over and they pushed him from one group to
another to shake his hand, but he didn't realize what he had escaped."

Lois, too, was self-conscious. In this lifting of the burden from Thor's
mind something had changed in their mutual relation. It was as if a
faculty arrested on the night Claude died had suddenly resumed its
function, taking t