His reason seemed to be tottering, he spoke and acted like a man in a dream.

Naturally he was entirely incapacitated for work and he had applied to Washington to be temporarily relieved from his judicial duties.

He was instantly granted a leave of absence and went at once to his home in Madison Avenue, where he shut himself up in his library, sitting for hours at his desk wrestling with documents and legal tomes in a pathetic endeavour to find some way out, trying to elude this net in which unseen hands had entangled him.
What an end to his career! To have struggled and achieved for half a century, to have built up a reputation year by year, as a man builds a house brick by brick, only to see the whole crumble to his feet like dust! To have gained the respect of the country, to have made a name as the most incorruptible of public servants and now to be branded as a common bribe taker! Could he be dreaming?
It was too incredible! What would his daughter say--his Shirley?
Ah, the thought of the expression of incredulity and wonder on her face when she heard the news cut him to the heart like a knife thrust.

Yet, he mused, her very unwillingness to believe it should really be his consolation.

Ah, his wife and his child--they knew he had been innocent of wrong doing.