of his study of her; and whereas, upon the witness stand, she had confronted him and faced him boldly, now she looked away.
"Ain't it so?" Neski appealed to him.
"Probably," he replied; but she knew that he had passed from consideration of what she had done and that he was trying to account for her herself, about whom he had admitted himself wrong, all wrong. He was not Mr. God-looking at all, leaning against the dirty pads and with his right shoulder queerly crumpled and his arm limp; he looked bewildered and boylike, his face cut and streaked with blood and his coat torn; but the boy, whom she saw, plainly was charging responsibility for his disaster and hers and Neski's to his own mistake, which he had acknowledged; neither by word nor bearing did he seek excuse or extenuation for himself.
Joan Royle was not used to seeing one thus call himself to account when affairs went wrong.
"It may require a day to complete the confirmation of the facts," Mr. Clarke said to her. "Besides, to-day is Sunday; but by to-morrow, at the latest, Ketlar will be freed, whatever the jury may report."
"To-morrow," she repeated, and he imagined that she deplored the delay, but actually she was not concerned for Ket, who was in jail, safe and sound and removed from the expedition of this night in which she had ceased to be an antagonist of Calvin Clarke and had made common cause with him.
Neski talked on, but Mr. Clarke and she sat silently facing each other, her back to one side of the truck, his against the opposite. Her feet, in dancing slippers, nearly touched his shoes, and he and she glanced at each other and looked down at their toes, which tossed together when the truck jounced.
She had gained to-night the freedom of Ket and the
