Lyon began, and told all of his tale. Lawrence listened with an attentiveness that seemed to meet the words half way and drag them out into expression. He had forgotten himself entirely, and his anger at her distress, his rage at Fullerton, his amazed and awed wonder when he heard that shame over her girlish folly in writing her heart out to a man unworthy of it had made her deaf to all other wooing, were as plainly revealed as though he had put them into his most voluble English. At the end he dropped his face upon his folded arms on the table.
"The poor child," he murmured to himself. "The poor child! As though that--or anything--would have made any difference!" Suddenly he wheeled upon Lyon, with dancing eyes. "Maybe you are thinking that this is an upper room in the county jail, and that I am a forlorn wretch with a good prospect of being hung! Never think it, my boy! There is nothing in all the universe so heaven-wide and free as this room. I know now how a man feels when his reprieve comes."
"But your reprieve hasn't come yet," said Lyon quietly. "That is exactly the point. Do you see any way yet in which I can help it to come?"
Lawrence looked at him silently, smilingly, and shook his head.
"Then it makes no difference in your attitude," pursued Lyon, "that Mrs. Broughton--and not anyone else--is shown to be the woman who was with Fullerton that evening?"
"It makes no difference," said Lawrence, quietly.
"Not even if she should prove to be the woman who ran across the street?"
"Is that your idea?" exclaimed Lawrence, in frank surprise. "Oh, you are on the wrong track. It was not she."
"But--if it was?"
Lawrence walked back and forth thoughtfully. Then he stopped again before Lyon.