They had made a great mistake, or so the lawyer decided when they again stood face to face in Mr. Ransom’s room.  That the latter made no immediate answer was no proof that he did not coincide in the other’s opinion.  Indeed it was only too evident that he did, for his first words, when he had controlled himself sufficiently to speak, were these: 

“I should have taken your advice.  In future I will.  To me she is henceforth Anitra, and I shall treat her as my wife’s sister.  Watch if I fail.  Anitra!  Anitra!” He reiterated the word as if he would fix it in his mind as well as accustom his lips to it.  Then he wheeled about and faced Harper, whose eyes he doubtless felt on him.  “Yet I am not so thoroughly convinced as to feel absolute peace here,” he admitted, striking his breast with irrepressible passion.  “My good sense tells me I am a fool, but my heart whispers that the sweetness in her sleeping face was the sweetness which won me to love Georgian Hazen.  That gentle sweetness!  Did you note it?”

“Yes, I noted what you mention.  But don’t let that influence you too much.  The wildest heart has its tender moments, and her dreams may have been pleasant ones.”

Mr. Ransom remembered her unconscious whisper and felt stunned, silenced.  The lawyer gave no evidence of observing this, but remarked quite easily and with evident sincerity: 

“I am more readily affected by proof than you are.  I am quite convinced myself, that our wits have been wool-gathering.  There was no mistaking her look of outraged womanhood.  It was not your wife who encountered your look, but the deaf Anitra.  Of course, you won’t believe me.  Yet I advise you to do so.  It would be too dreadful to find that this woman really is your wife.”

“What?”

“I know what I am saying.  Nothing much worse could happen to you.  Don’t you see where the hypothesis to which you persist in clinging would land you?  Should the woman in there prove to be your wife Georgian—­” The lawyer stopped and, in a tone the seriousness of which could not fail to impress his agitated hearer, added quietly, “you remember what I said to you a short time ago about guilt.”

“Guilt!”

“No, the word was shame.  But guilt better expresses my meaning.  I repeat, should the woman prove to be, not the lovely but ignorant girl she appears, but Georgian Ransom, your wife, then upon her must fall the onus of Anitra’s disappearance if not of her possible death.  No! you must hear me out; the time has come for plain speaking.  Your wife had her reasons—­we do not know what they were, but they were no common ones—­for wishing this intrusive sister out of the way.  Anitra, on the contrary, could have desired nothing so much as the preservation of her protector.  The conclusion is not an agreeable one.  Let us hope that the question it involves will never be presented for any man’s consideration.”

Mr. Ransom sank speechless into a chair.  This last blow was an overwhelming one and he sank before it.