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 mented quietly, gazing up at Gregg, "who is in the hard position. I've been thinking about her a good deal. I would have liked to go and talk to her, if that were possible. Of course it has not been. So that was why I was glad to see some one—besides your friend Rinderfeld—who has access to her."

"What has Rinderfeld told you about her?" Gregg asked too quickly.

Mrs. Russell made no betrayal motion of surprise but the intensity of her gaze at Gregg seemed suddenly to deepen.

"Nothing to me," she replied, quietly, "except that we must always remember that, although the daughter knows, she is as much to be protected from consequences as her mother—more to be protected, in fact; more."

The repetition and emphasis of that evidently was quotation from Rinderfeld; and the hearing of it sent hot blood through Gregg's veins. But he offered no comment.

"I presume that you, too, are more interested in protection of the daughter than of the mother," Mrs. Russell went on calmly. "For her, you came to see me."

"I am," Gregg admitted and gazed from her down at the table in silence for a moment. "Too," the word kept bothering him. Then he shook off this obsession about Rinderfeld and said:

"She's trying to salvage something from her home—that girl up in Evanston whom we're both thinking of—without a chance in the world to save much. Her home's gone; she surely realizes that; she wouldn't have it go on as before; she knows her father and mother must separate. But a man can't tell her to give up the hold she has on what's left until he can show