The governor spoke meditatively. The two persons in the room silently regarded him. Something in the man, in the moment, impelled awe. He set his hand to the paper to write, but paused an instant longer. His eyes wandered from the document. As he raised them over her, the woman bowed her head. Out through the open window, out through the summer morning, over the wimpling foliage of the trees, far, far away they gazed. And then he sighed, as a woman sighs, and turning, signed the pardon of Thomas Whalen. A moment he sat still as an ancient statue, and then dropping the pen on the desk, he turned toward Gilman with a smile. The action relieved the young man from the spell which bound him.
"Are you going before the people with that story I worked up?" he cried.
Fiercely, without awaiting a reply to a question already answered, he wheeled on the woman.
"Do you see what he has done? He has given up all—he has killed himself! He says Whalen is innocent—and doesn't even know upon whom to fasten suspicion! Don't you—my God, woman—can't you see?"
