“Ah!” he exclaimed with a sudden indrawing of his breath.  “You don’t know what it is costing me!”

“Truly, I don’t,” she asserted calmly.  “Your father is a great and good man.  If he had a daughter instead of a son, she would know and understand.”  Then, in a quick and generous upflash of feeling:  “I wish he had a daughter—­I wish I were she!  I should try to show him that blood is thicker than water!”

“You wish—­you were—­his daughter?  Do you realize what you are saying?” Then he went on brokenly:  “Don’t, Patricia, girl—­for God’s sake don’t tempt me to do evil that good may come!  Can’t you understand how I am driven to do this thing—­how every fibre of me is rebelling against the savage necessity?  God knows, I’d give anything I am or hope to be if the necessity could be wiped out!”

Instantly she changed her attack.

“But I say you can not do it.  You are a brave man, Evan; I know, because I have seen you tried.  You mustn’t turn cowardly now.”

“Nor shall I!” he countered quickly.  “But I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?  Isn’t it cowardly to strike this cruel blow in the dark?  You can’t do this thing without giving your father the warning that you would give your bitterest enemy—­you simply can’t, and still be the man I have known and l—­liked for two whole years!”

“Father’s going to Wartrace this afternoon is merely an added twist of the thumb-screws,” he protested in fresh wretchedness.  “I should have gone to him first—­I meant to go to him first.  From what you said over the telephone this morning I gathered that the Wartrace trip was to be made on my account, and I hoped, I believed, it would be given up when I refused to go.  Now I can not see him first; the time is too short.  That which is to be done must be done to-day—­this afternoon; otherwise it will be too late.  Don’t make it any harder for me, Patricia.  Surely you can see how hard it is, in any case!”

“As I said a moment ago, I can see that you are about to do something for which, in all the years to come, you will never be able to get your own forgiveness.  Oh, I know,” she went on bitterly.  “You will tell me that I am a woman, with only a woman’s standards, which are valueless when they get mixed up with the emotions.  But I can tell you that I know your father better than you do—­much better.  And I believe in him, utterly, absolutely.  Won’t you give him a chance, Evan?  Won’t you show him those dreadful papers and ask him what he will do when you have betrayed him?”

Blount winced painfully at the hard word, and then he remembered that he had been the first to apply it.  But he answered her in the only way that seemed possible: 

“The time:  I have promised to meet Chief Justice Hemingway at his chambers between four and five this afternoon.”

“Chief Justice Hemingway?” she queried.  “Why, he—­” she broke off suddenly and sprang from her chair.  “I have the little car here in the street.  It was Mrs. Blount’s proposal; she said you would change your mind if I came after you and offered to drive you.  Come!  I’ll promise to bring you back before five o’clock.  I know the time is awfully short, but I can do it!”