ympathy. "You've touched bottom in that story, Verrian. You
may go higher, but you can never go deeper."

Verrian flushed a little. "Oh, thank you!"

"I'm not surprised the girl wants to know how you manage your
problem--such a girl, standing in the shadow of the other world,
which is always eclipsing this, and seeing how you've caught its awful
outline."

Verrian made a grateful murmur at the praise. "That is what my mother
felt. Then you have no doubt of the good faith--"

"No," the editor returned, with the same quantity, if not the same
quality, of reluctance as before. "You see, it would be too daring."

"Then why not let her have the proofs?"

"The thing is so unprecedented--"

"Our doing it needn't form a precedent."

"No."

"And if you've no doubt of its being a true case--"

"We must prove that it is, or, rather, we must make her prove it. I
quite feel with you about it. If I were to act upon my own impulse, my
own convictions, I should send her the rest of the story and take the
chances. But she may be an enterprising journalist in disguise it's
astonishing what women will do when they take to newspaper work--and we
have no right to risk anything, for the magazine's sake, if not yours
and mine. Will you leave this letter with me?"

"I expected to leave the whole affair in your hands. Do you mind telling
me what you propose to do? Of course, it won't be anything--abrupt--"

"Oh no; and I don't mind telling you what has occurred to me. If this is
a true case, as you say, and I've no question but it is, the writer will
be on confidential terms with her pastor as well as her doctor and I
propose asking her to get him to certify, in any sort of general terms,
to her identity. I will treat the matter delicately--Or, if you prefer
to write to her yourself--"

"Oh no, it's much better for you to do it; you can do it
authoritatively."

"Yes, and if she isn't the real thing, but merely a woman journalist
trying to work us for a 'story' in her Sunday edition, we shall hear no
more from her."

"I don't see anything to object to in your plan," Verrian said, upon
reflection. "She certainly can't complain of our being cautious."

"No, and she won't. I shall have to refer the matter to the house--"

"Oh, will you?"

"Why, certainly! I couldn't take a step like that without the approval
of the house."

"No," Verrian assented, and he made a note of the writer's address from
the letter. Then, after a mom