Alone in the drawing-room, Ronnie sat staring at the thick wad of papers, and at the envelope which topped them. "To my son," read the writing on the envelope; the well-known handwriting with the little loops at the top of the "o's" and the upright triangles of the "m's" and "n's."

He took up and opened the envelope. Inside of it, folded, lay a single sheet of note-paper: "Don't be unhappy, Ronnie. Don't blame yourself. This book is my last effort for you and Aliette. I feel it is your way to freedom. Use it as you and James Wilberforce think best. I have just had news of your great success. It makes me very proud. Your Mother."

Ronnie's eyes blurred, as Julia's eyes had blurred when her weak hands penciled the uneven lines. Puzzled and miserable--his heart choking in his mouth--he turned from the letter to the papers. The papers were in typescript; six pads, each holed and taped.

"'Man's Law,'" read the topmost paper of all; "'The Story of a Wrong,' By Julia Cavendish: and by her dedicated to all those of her own sex who have suffered and are suffering injustice."

Julia's son picked the top pad from the manuscript, turned over the title-page, and began to read his mother's preface.

For a few lines he read aimlessly, as folk obsessed by grief read, their thoughts wandering from the written word. Then, with one paragraph, the words gripped him, so that he forgot even his grief.

"All my life," read the paragraph, "I have believed in the sanctity of the Christian marriage tie. Believing that the oath taken by a man and a woman before their God--'so long as ye both shall live'--might only be set aside by death, I made the safeguarding of that oath a fetish and a shibboleth. The purpose of this book is to undo, so far as in me lies, the teachings of my former works on the marriage question; and I embrace this purpose the more firmly because it has been brought home to me by personal experience that there are and must always be many cases in which the application of a rigid doctrine leads to misery. Therefore I have felt it my duty--a duty not undertaken lightly--to combat that rigid doctrine; and to plead, in substitution for a code which I now believe un-Christian, the doctrine of 'The Right to Married Happiness.'"

Interested, Ronnie read on. Outside, rain fell and fell. Within was no sound save the rustle of turned paper. The first chapter of "Man's Law"--the second--the third raced through his brain, enthralling him, holding him spellbound. The words became symbols of speech--speech itself. It seemed to him as though Julia Cavendish were actually in the room, as though actually he heard her voice. And the voice told him a story similar to his own. The story of a Ronald Cavendish and an Aliette Brunton!

But so grandly did the story draw him on, that only gradually--gradually as a man sees dawn dissolving night---did Ronnie realize the personal application of it; realize that here, in words of sheer genius, an advocate not tonguetied--where he himself would always have been tonguetied, in Aliette's defense--pleaded not so much the cause of all the Aliettes in the world as, in sentences now so reasoned that they convinced the very intellect, now so passionate that they wrung the very heart, the cause of his own individual Aliette, the cause of Hector Brunton's wife against her legal owner.

And at that, a little, the lawyer in Ronnie's mind ousted, the lover.

Half-way through the book, he put it down for a moment. Sentences--certain sentences so venomous that he marveled his mother could have written them--comments, certain comments all leveled against one particular character, stuck like needles in his legal mind. His legal mind said to him: "Slander. Those sentences, those comments, are actionable."

Then he picked up the manuscript again, and read on--on and on,--unconscious of the clock-tick from the mantelpiece, of the rain ceasing without, of the day dawning wan across the Sussex Downs.

Till violently, with the ending of the tale, remembering his mother's letter, he saw her purpose plain.

"Man's Law" represented Julia's "flaunting policy" carried to its uttermost extreme! It wasn't fiction at all--it was his own story--his story, and Aliette's and Hector's--scarcely disguised! He recollected her interest in the Carrington case--recollected telling her how Belfield had broken Carrington, at long last, by the aid of the press.

Julia, obviously, had planned to break Aliette's husband in much the same way. This book once published, Hector Brunton would be compelled (Julia's photographic memory had etched the husband of her tale so accurately that no reader could mistake him for other than the "hanging prosecutor") to bring an action for divorce. Brunton, even as Carrington, could not permit the knowledge that his wife lived openly with another man to become the public property of Julia Cavendish's million readers.

"Yes!"--for a moment hope kindled in Ronnie's dazed mind--"'Man's Law' would bring Aliette's husband to his senses! Publish the book; and Brunton must file his petition! Unless--unless he brought suit for libel. But if he did that, surely he would have to admit that his wife was living unsued in open adultery. Could a man make that admission--and still wear silk?"

Ronnie's hope expired; violently reaction set in. His heart quaked. He saw, in a flash, the thousand consequences which the publication of "Man's Law"--if, indeed, any publisher would set his imprint on so libelous a story--must entail. This, his mother's last effort to set Aliette free, was a two-edged weapon. However wielded, it would have to be wielded publicly. And publicity--even if it injured his enemy--could help neither him nor Aliette.

Publish the book--and the whole world would know their story! Yes, but who, in all the world, knowing their story, would sympathize with them? Even sympathizing, who would take their side? It took more than a book to turn public opinion. As far as decent people were concerned, the very asking for sympathy would alienate it. Suppose Brunton risked the scandal--sued for libel but not for divorce? Brunton couldn't very well do that. Still----

Fearfully, clutching the letter and the manuscript, Ronnie stumbled up the fast-lightening staircase. "Man's Law" seemed like a ton-weight of social dynamite--of social dynamite he dared not use--in his arms.