"Can I do anything?"
"Yes, tell me. Do you condemn me?"
The novelist hesitated. "There are no human scales for any soul. Though, to be sure——"
"What?"
"It might have been avoided. As it is, they will suspect her."
"Cassy?"
"Naturally. They can't hold Lennox on a paper-cutter—that belongs to me, and a few empty words said in my presence and which, if necessary, I did not hear. They can't hold him on that. But when they learn, as they will, the circumstances of your daughter's misadventure, they will arrest her."
"Merciful God!"
The jeopardy to her, a jeopardy previously undiscerned, but which then shaken at him, instantly took shape, twisted his mouth into the appalling grimace that mediæval art gave to the damned.
"And you don't want that," Jones remotely resumed.