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 for your father's act, you did nothing but good!"

She tried to push herself free from me. "How can you say that?"

"Because it's true! It's true!" I cried and held her as though with my arms I could save her sanity. "Your father was responsible, at the worst, for no more than Bane."

"But he did it all; he led them!"

"In a premature, poorly planned raid which did little in comparison with what they might have done. Your madman Bane had to go ahead at once when Cawder would have waited for full preparation of a tremendous plan. So Bane destroyed one ship when Cawder would have struck with a great airfleet at the nation's greatest cities!

"And in what was done, you were always a check upon Bane; but for you, he would have been more merciless; and but for you, no warning would have gone to the navy airplanes. For Sally Gessler sent it to destroy Bane, and you, in her jealousy of you."

She quivered, small and lovely in my arms; and more quietly I held her against me as