For a few moments now John Steele remained motionless, listening to their departing footsteps; then turned and gazed around him.

Never had his rooms appeared more cheerless, more barren, more empty.  No, not empty; they were filled with memories.  Hardly pleasant ones; recollections of struggles, contentions that had led him to—­what?  His chambers seemed very still; the little street very silent.  Time had been when he had not felt its solitude; now he experienced only a sense of irksomeness, isolation.  The man squared his shoulders and looked out again from the window toward that small bit of the river he could just discern.  Once he had gazed at it when its song seemed to be of the green banks and flowers it had passed by; but that had been on a fairer occasion; at the close of a joyous, spring day.  How it came back to him; the solemn court of justice, the beautiful face, an open doorway, with the sunshine golden without and a figure that, ere passing into it, had turned to look back!  It was but for an instant, yet again his gaze seemed to leap to that luring light, the passing gleam of her eyes, that had lingered—­

That he saw now! or was it a dream?  At the threshold near-by, some one looked out; some one as fair, fairer, if that could be, whose cheeks wore the tint of the wild rose.

“Pardon me; I came up to see if my uncle—­”

He stared at her, at the beautiful, tremulous lips, the sheen of her hair—­

“You!—­”

“Yes.”  She raised a small, gloved hand and swept back a disordered tress.

“Your—­your uncle has just gone,” he said.

“I know.”

“You do?” He knew it was no dream, that the fever had not returned, that she really stood there.  Yet it seemed inexplicable.

“I was in the library when they—­went out.  I had come up to see—­I was with my uncle in the cab—­and wondered why he—­”

She stopped; he took a quick step toward her.  “You were in there, that room, when—­”

“Yes,” she said, and threw back her head, as if to contradict a sudden mistiness that seemed stupidly sweeping over her gaze.  “Why did you not tell me—­you did not?—­that you were innocent?”

“You were in there?” He did not seem to catch her words.  “Heard—­heard—?”

A moment they stood looking at each other; suddenly she reached out her hands to him.  With a quick exclamation he caught and held them.

But in a moment he let them fall.  What had he been about to say, to do, with the fair face, the golden head, so near?  He stepped back quickly—­madness!  Had he not yet learned control?  Had the lessons not been severe enough?  But he was master of himself now, could look at her coldly.  Fortunately she had not guessed, did not know he had almost—­She stood near the back of a chair, her face half-averted; perhaps she appeared slightly paler, but he was not sure; it might be only the shadow of the thick golden hair.