"Hurd," he said, quickly, "you're in the wrong pew. Miss Iverson doesn't even know what you're talking about." He turned to me. "He's afraid," he explained, "that Mrs. Brandow confessed to you in Fairview, and that you threw us down by suppressing the story."

For an instant I was dazed. Then I laughed. "Mr. Hurd," I said, "I give you my word that Mrs. Brandow never confessed anything to me."

Mr. Hurd's knitted brows uncreased. "That's straight, is it?" he demanded.

"That's straight," I repeated.

Hurd dropped the magazine on the floor and turned to his papers. "'L right," he muttered, "don't let 't happen 'gain."

Mr. Morris and I exchanged an understanding smile as I picked up the magazine and left the room.

In the outer room I met Gibson. His grin of greeting was wide and friendly, his voice low and interested.

"Read your story last night," he whispered. "Say, tell me--_did_ she, really?"

I filled the next five minutes explaining to Gibson. He looked relieved. "I didn't think there was anything in it," he said. "That woman's no murderess. But, say, you made the story read like the real thing!"

Within the next few days everybody on the _Searchlight_ staff seemed to have read _The Woman's Friend_, and to be taking part in the discussion my story aroused. Those of my a.s.sociates who believed in the innocence of Mrs. Brandow accepted the tale for what it was--a work of fiction. Those without prejudice were inclined to think there was "something in it," and at least half a dozen who believed her guilty also firmly believed that I had allowed an acute and untimely spasm of womanly sympathy to deprive the _Searchlight_ of "the best and biggest beat in years." For a few days I remained pleasantly unconscious of being a storm-center, but one morning a second summons from Mr. Hurd opened my eyes to the situation.

"See here!" began that gentleman, rudely. "What does all this talk mean, anyway? They're saying now that you and Morris suppressed the Brandow confession between you. Jim, the elevator-boy, says he heard you agree to do it."

G.o.dfrey Morris leaped to his feet and came toward us. "Good Lord, Hurd," he cried, fiercely, "I believe you're crazy! Why don't you come to me with this rot, if you're going to notice it, and not bother Miss Iverson? We joked about a confession, and I suppose Jim heard us. The joke was what suggested the magazine story."

"Well, _that's_ no joke." Hurd spoke grudgingly, as if unwillingly impressed. "Suppose the woman had confessed," he asked me, suddenly--"would you have given us the story?"

I shook my head. "Certainly not," I admitted. "You forget that I had agreed not to print a word she said."

Hurd's expression of uncertainty was so funny that I laughed. "But she didn't," I added, comfortingly. "Do you think I'd lie to you?"

"You might." Hurd was in a pessimistic mood. "To save her, or--" A rare phenomenon occurred; he smiled--all his boyish dimples suddenly revealed--"to save Morris from losing his job," he finished, coolly.

I felt my face grow hot. Morris rushed to the rescue. "The only thing I regret in this confounded mess," he muttered, ignoring Hurd's words, "is the effect on Mrs. Brandow. _The Woman's Friend_ has half a million readers. They'll all think she's guilty."

"Good job," said Hurd. "She _is_ guilty!"

"Rot! She's absolutely innocent," replied Morris. "Why, even the fool jury acquitted her on the first ballot!"

I left them arguing and slipped away, sick at heart. In the sudden moment of illumination following Morris's words it had come to me that the one person to be considered in the whole episode was the person of whom I had not thought at all! I had done Helen Brandow a great wrong.

Her case had been almost forgotten; somewhere she was trying to build up a new life. I had knocked out the new foundations.

It was a disturbing reflection, and the events of the next few days deepened my depression. Several reviewers commented on the similarity of my story to the Brandow case. People began to ask where Mrs.

Brandow was, began again to argue the question of her innocence or her guilt. Efforts were made to find her hiding-place. The thought of the injury I had done the unhappy woman became an obsession. There seemed only one way to exorcise it, and that was to see or write to my "victim," as Hurd jocosely called her, make my confession, and have her absolve me, if she would, of any intent of injury.

On the wings of this inspiration I sought Mr. Davies, and, putting the situation before him, asked for his client's address.

"Of course I can't give you her address," he explained, mildly. "But I'll write to her and tell her you want it. Yes, yes, with pleasure. I know how you feel." He smiled reflectively. "She's a wonderful woman,"

he added. "Most remarkable woman I ever met--strongest soul." He sighed, then smiled again. "I'll write," he repeated; and with this I had to be content. I had done all that I could do. But my nerves began to feel the effect of the strain upon them, and it was a relief when I reached my home in Madison Square late one evening and found Mrs.

Brandow waiting for me.

She was sitting in a little reception-room off the main hall of the building, and as I pa.s.sed the door on my way to the elevator she rose and came toward me. She wore a thick veil, but something in me recognized her even before I caught the flash of her eyes through it, and noticed the characteristically erect poise of the head which every reporter who saw her had described.

"Mr. Davies said you wanted to talk to me," she began, without greeting me. "Here I am. Have I come at the wrong time?"

I slipped my hand through her arm. "No," was all I could say. "It was very good of you to come at all. I did not expect that." In silence we entered the elevator and ascended to my floor. As I opened the door with my latch-key and waited for her to go in I spoke again. "I can't tell you how much I've been thinking of you," I said.

She made no reply. We pa.s.sed through the hall into my study, and while I turned on the electric lights she dropped into a big arm-chair beside a window overlooking the Square, threw back her veil, and slipped off the heavy furs she wore. As the lights flashed up we exchanged a swift look. Little more than a year had pa.s.sed since our former meeting, but she seemed many years older and much less beautiful. There were new lines about her eyes and mouth, and the black hair over her temples was growing gray. I started to draw down the window-shades, for it was snowing hard, and the empty Square below, with a few tramps shivering on its benches, afforded but a dreary vista. She checked me.

"Leave them as they are," she directed, imperiously, adding as an afterthought: "Please. I like to be able to look out."

I obeyed, realizing now, as I had not done before, what those months of confinement must have meant to her. When I had removed my hat and coat, and lit the logs that lay ready in my big fireplace, I took a chair near her.

"First of all," I began, "I want to thank you for coming. And then--I want to beg your forgiveness."

For a moment she studied me in silence. "That's rather odd of you,"

she murmured, reflectively. "You know I'm fair game! Why shouldn't you run with the pack?"

My eyes, even my head, went down before that. For a moment I could not reply. Then it seemed to me that the most important thing in the world was to make her understand.

"Of course," I admitted, "I deserve anything you say. I did a horrible thing when I printed that story. I should never have offered it to an editor. My defense is simply that I didn't realize what I was doing.

That's what I want to make clear to you. That's why I asked to see you."

"I see," she said, slowly. "It's not the story you're apologizing for.

It's the effect."

"Yes," I explained, eagerly, "it's the effect. I hadn't been out of school more than a year when I came to you in Fairview," I hurried on.

"I was very young, and appallingly ignorant. It never occurred to me that any one would connect a fiction story with--with your case."

She looked at me, and with all the courage I could summon I gazed straight back into her strange, deep eyes. For a long instant the look held, and during it something came to me, something new and poignant, something that filled me with an indescribable pity for the loneliness I now understood, and for the courage of the nature that bore it so superbly. She would ask nothing of the world, this woman. Nor would she defend herself. People could think what they chose. But she would suffer.

I leaned toward her. "Mrs. Brandow," I said, "I wish I could make you understand how I feel about this. I believe it has made me ten years older."

She smiled. "That would be a pity," she said, "when you're so deliciously young."

"Is there anything I can do?" I persisted.

She raised her eyebrows. "I'm afraid not," she murmured, "unless it is to cease doing anything. You see, your activities where I am concerned are so hectic."

I felt my face burn. "You're very hard on me, but I deserve it. I didn't realize," I repeated, "that the story would suggest you to the public."

"Even though you described me?" she interjected, the odd, sardonic gleam deepening in her black eyes.

"But I didn't describe you as you are," I protested, eagerly. "I made you a blonde! Don't you remember? And I made a Western city the scene of the trial, and changed some of the conditions of the--" I faltered--"of the crime."

"As if that mattered," she said, coolly. "You described _me_--to the shape of my finger-nails, the b.u.t.tons on my shoes." Suddenly she laughed. "Those dreadful b.u.t.tons! I see them still in my dreams. It seems to me that I was always sewing them on. The only parts of me I allowed to move in the court-room were my feet. No one could see them, under my skirt. I used to loosen a b.u.t.ton almost every day. Then of course I had to sew them on. I had a sick fear of looking messy and untidy--of degenerating physically."

She faced the wide windows and the snow-filled sky. In my own chair, facing the fire, I also directly faced her.

"I'm going to Europe," she announced at last. "I'm sailing to-morrow morning--to be gone 'for good,' as the children say. That's why I came to-night." For a moment she sat in silence, wholly, restfully at her ease. Dimly I began to realize that she was enjoying the intimacy of the moment, the sense of human companionship, and again it came to me how tragically lonely she must be. She had no near friends, and in the minds of all others there must always be the hideous interrogation-point that stood between her and life. At best she had "the benefit of the doubt." And I had helped to destroy even the little that was left to her. I could have fallen at her feet.