"I want to be on hand when she sees him," he insisted. "I don't want to talk—I've done all that—I won't say a word—but I want to be here. You think you know her better than I do because you're younger—but you don't. We've lived right here together—she's been my chum for twenty-five years, and I know things about her you don't know. She's wilful, she's as wild as a hawk—but she can't hold out, she hasn't it in her."
"She will if you act as you did just now——"
"But I won't," he said sharply. "That was a mistake—and I won't let it happen again. When he comes you do the talking, boy—and if we're beaten I won't try to keep her, she goes and it's ended, I promise you that. But, son, don't make any mistake about this—I have an influence over this girl that you haven't got and nobody has. I want her to feel me beside her."
He went over this again and again, and with this I had to leave him.
I found Joe in his office. He rose abruptly when I came in, and reached for his hat.
"Let's go out for a walk," he said. Down in the street he turned on me: "Sue has just 'phoned me you were there. She thought you were going to help her, Bill, she thought that you'd stand by her. She didn't get any sleep last night—she's been through hell with that father of hers——"
"Oh, I've been all through Sue's sufferings, Joe. Don't give me any more of that."
"You mean you think she's faking?"
"No. But to be good and brutally frank about it, what she suffers just now doesn't count with me. It's what her whole life may be with you."