Hector Brunton tottered out of his car and up the steps into his chambers like a man in a palsy. Three clients were waiting in the outer office for consultations. He told Patterson: "Send them away. Get rid of them. Say I'm too ill to see anybody." Then heavily he sat down at his desk.

The shock of Maggie Peterson's arrest, climaxing emotion, was still on him. Definitely his experience knew himself defeated. "God!" he muttered, "another night--another night of the rack."

The previous night had been torment enough. Then he had thought: "I may fail. Cavendish may have something up his sleeve"; then he had seen only success in jeopardy; dreaded only the failure of his vengeance. But now--now he was beaten--worse than beaten--delivered up, body and soul, to the Furies.

The clerk came in to ask if he might go. "Yes," said Brunton; "go. Go as soon as you like." The clerk went out, leaving him alone; alone with his Furies.

The Furies showed him Aliette, infinitely fastidious, infinitely desirable; they showed him RenÉe, RenÉe who would even now be awaiting him; they showed Lucy, Lucy Towers, stubborn in her cell. "Don't let her go free from her cell," whispered the Furies. "You're not beaten yet. She did kill the man. Convict her, Hector Brunton. Convict her of manslaughter."

They showed him Cavendish, Cavendish gloating at the prospect of victory. "To be beaten," whispered the Furies, "to be beaten by Cavendish, by the adulterer who stole away your wife!"

But all the time Hector Brunton knew in his inmost soul that he had sought to compass the death of an innocent woman; that he had sinned against his own code, against the holy ghost of justice.

And gradually, terrifyingly, the reason of that sinning was brought home to him. He had sinned, not as a woman sins, lovingly, but for sheer hate. Out of his hatred for Cavendish he had plotted--as surely as any murderer--the death of Lucy Towers.

And suddenly, starkly, irresistibly, it was brought home to him that--even as he had plotted the death of Lucy Towers--so, and for the same hideous reason, he had plotted the social ruin of his own wife.

Till finally the ultimate pretext, the pretext of his love for Aliette, was stripped from him, and he saw that love in all its hideous nakedness, as lust--the savage sadic lust which had hounded him to crime.

David Patterson had long gone home; but Brunton sat on--alone in his chambers--alone with his conscience, naked before his God. His worldly house, the sure material legal house of his own making, had crashed, in that one second of time when he watched Lucy Towers step down from the dock, to ruin. The law, basis of work and life, lay--a tablet shattered to ten thousand fragments--at his feet. Ghosts--the palpable ghosts of those two women for the compassing of whose ruin he had invoked the law--sidled about the darkling room, terrifying him. He knew himself a prisoner--prisoner in the invisible house of God.

Was there no way out? No escape from God's house of conscience? Had he, abiding by the letter of man's law, forfeited--for all time--the merciful spirit of the law of God?

"Yes," said conscience, "there is one way out. One way, and one way only, of escape. Make reparation, Hector Brunton. Set both these women free."

Must he, then, give up everything--wife, vengeance, victory--because of this one damnable insistent whisper, this whisper of conscience that was driving him to madness?

And now, again, he saw the phantoms--phantom of Aliette and phantom of Lucy Towers. They were behind bars--bars--innocent women behind bars which he, Hector Brunton, had socketed home with his own hands.

At last, thought of those bars drove him into the night. King's Bench Walk lay deserted, chill-gleaming under autumnal trees. Leaves strewed it, swishing against his boots as he strode. "Autumn," thought Brunton. "Autumn! We've reached middle age, the year and I. And what have I garnered? Nothing."

Suddenly he realized whither his feet were carrying him; suddenly he found himself under the colonnade of Pump Court, at the door of his rival's chambers. The door was shut, the court deserted. Yet for a long time Brunton stood by the door; stood, as a man stands who waits for some sign, for an opening window or the gleam of a light. But no window opened, no light gleamed.

He came, hardly knowing how, out of the gloom of the Temple into the raw glare of empty Fleet Street. In front of him uprose the long faÇade of the high courts, the courts where he had won fame and money. What did fame and money matter to him--to Hector Brunton, who, gaining the whole legal world, had lost his own soul?