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“Oh,” said I. I understood how Gorgett had managed to be so calm that afternoon.

“It was the purest kiss ever given!” Farwell groaned again.

“Who was it saw you?” I asked.

He dropped into a chair and I saw the tears of rage and humiliation welling up again in his eyes.

“We might as well have been standing by the footlights in a theatre!” he burst out, brokenly. “Who saw it? Who didn’t see it? Gorgett’s sleuth-hound, the man he sent to me this afternoon, for one; the policeman on the beat that he’d stopped for a chat in front of the house, for another; a maid in the hall behind us, the policeman’s sweetheart she is, for another! Oh!” he cried, “the desecration! That one caress, one that I’d thought a sacred secret between us forever–and in plain sight of those three hideous vulgarians, all belonging to my enemy, Gorgett! Ah, the horror of it–what horror!”

Farwell wrung his hands and sat, gulping as if he were sick, without speaking for several moments.

“What terms did the man he sent offer from Gorgett?” I asked.

“No terms! He said to go ahead and print my story about the closet; it was a matter of perfect indifference to him; that he meant to print this about me in their damnable party-organ tomorrow, in any event, and only warned me so that I should have time to prepare Miss Buskirk. Of course he don’t care! I’ll be ruined, that’s all. Oh, the hideous injustice of it, the unreason! Don’t you see the frightful irony of it? The best thing in my life, the widest and deepest; my friendship with a good woman becomes a joke and a horror! Don’t you see that the personal scandal about me absolutely undermines me and nullifies the political scandal of the closet affair? Gorgett will come in again and the Grand Jury would laugh at any attack on him. I’m ruined for good, for good and all, for good and all!”

“Have you told Miss Buskirk?”

He uttered a kind of a shriek. “No! I can’t! How could I? What do you think I’m made of? And there’s her father–and all her relatives, and mine, and my wife–my wife! If she leaves me–“

A fit of nausea seemed to overcome him and he struggled with it, shivering. “My God! Do you think I can face it? I’ve come to you for help in the most wretched hour of my life–all darkness, darkness! Just on the eve of triumph to be stricken down–it’s so cruel, so devilish! And to think of the horrible comic-weekly misery of it, caught kissing a girl, by a policeman and his sweetheart, the chambermaid! Ugh! The vulgar ridicule–the hideous laughter!” He raised his hands to me, the most grovelling figure of a man I ever saw.

“Oh, for God’s sake, help me, help me….”

Well, sir, it was sickening enough, but after he had gone, and I tumbled into bed again, I thought of Gorgett and laughed myself to sleep with admiration.

When Farwell and I got to Gorgett’s office, fairly early the next morning, Lafe was sitting there alone, expecting us, of course, as I knew he would be, but in the same characteristic, lazy attitude I’d found him in, the day before; feet up on the desk, hat-brim tilted ‘way forward, cigar in the right-hand corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets, his double-chin mashing down his limp collar. He didn’t even turn to look at us as we came in and closed the door.

“Come in, gentlemen, come in,” says he, not moving. “I kind of thought you’d be along, about this time.”

“Looking for us, were you?” I asked.

“Yes,” said he. “Sit down.”

We did; Farwell looking pretty pale and red-eyed, and swallowing a good deal.

There was a long, long silence. We just sat and watched Gorgett. I didn’t want to say anything; and I believe Farwell couldn’t. It lasted so long that it began to look as if the little blue haze at the end of Lafe’s cigar was all that was going to happen. But by and by he turned his head ever so little, and looked at Knowles.