regained his mastery.

"There is no plan for me to drop," he said huskily.

"You still cling to the part you are playing?"

"I am playing no part; you are all wrong about me," he continued.
"Your charges are so absurd that it would be foolish to deny them.
They are merely the ravings of an hysterical woman."

"And this is your answer?"

"That is my answer."

She gazed at him for a long moment. Then she sighed.

"I'm so sorry!" she said; and she turned away and moved toward the
door.

She gave him a parting look, as he stood pale, quivering, yet
controlled, behind his desk. In this last moment she remembered the
gallant fight this man had made against Blind Charlie Peck; she
remembered that fragrant, far-distant night of June when he had asked
her to marry him; and she felt as though she were gazing for the last
time upon a dear dead face.

"I'm sorry--oh, so sorry!" she said tremulously. "Good-by." And
turning, she walked with bowed head out of his office.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EDITOR OF THE _EXPRESS_

Katherine stumbled down into the dusty, quivering heat of the Square.
She was still awed and dumfounded by her discovery; she could not as
yet realize its full significance and whither it would lead; but her
mind was a ferment of thoughts that were unfinished and questions that
did not await reply.

How had a man once so splendid come to sell his soul for money or
ambition? What would Westville think and do, Westville who worshipped
him, if it but knew the truth? How was she to give battle to an
antagonist, so able in himself, so powerfully supported by the public?
What a strange caprice of fate it was that had given her as the man
she must fight, defeat, or be defeated by, her former idol, her former
lover!

Shaken with emotion, her mind shot through with these fragmentary
thoughts, she turned into a side street. But she had walked beneath
its withered maples no more than a block or two, when her largest
immediate problem, her father's trial on the morrow, thrust itself
into her consciousness, and the pressing need of further action drove
all this spasmodic speculation from her mind. She began to think upon
what she should next do. Almost instantly her mind darted to the man
whom she had definitely connected with the plot against her father,
Arnold Bruce, and she turned back toward the Square, afire with a new
idea.

She had made great advance through suddenly, though unintentionally,
confront