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Wilkinson sank into his chair and covered his face with his hands. Leslie darted around the corner of the big desk and threw her arms about him.

"I knew—I knew——" she sobbed in her joy. She pressed her young, fair face against his grizzled jowl. "My father ..." she whispered softly to him, as though to some lover, "my father, will you believe that I never really doubted you? It sounded so true on the instant——"

Wilkinson drew her to his knee and kissed her.

"I don't wonder you believed him, girlie," he said after a while. "Why shouldn't he fool you, when he fooled your old father."

The girl still clung to him, but Wilkinson felt the strain beginning to tell, felt that his face was growing ashen with fatigue, and now that it was over he needed solitude. So he placed her lightly on her feet, and tapping her affectionately on the shoulder, said:

"Run along now, girlie. And on your way out you might tell Jordan that I'm not to be disturbed for fifteen minutes—not even by that Flomerfelt, who seems to be wandering around upstairs in our private apartments. That man gets on my nerves so that I can't think."