Presently Mr. Brace ushered a disappointed poet out of his office and called "Miss Rayefsky." "By appointment," he added, as those who were ahead of her moved restlessly in protest.
He pulled up a chair for her beside his desk, and picking up his blue pencil, began a little lecture on the advertising rate of the magazine page. It was ten cents a word. His blue pencil scratched out a sentence from one of her stories. It would certainly not do any one a dollar and a half's worth of good. It began to look to Yetta as if there would be nothing left except blue pencil marks. But he glowed with pleasure during the process. When he had come to the end, he announced with pride that he had killed at least twenty-five dollars' worth of padding. She wished he would let her go quickly. She was afraid she might cry if he jeered at her any more.
"I hope we can arrange for some more of this soon," he said abruptly, handing her a check.
It was for seventy-five dollars! She had never had so much money at one time before in her life. And she had earned it in four days!
But this was a small matter beside seeing her story in print that afternoon. Here was a tangible sign of her progress to send Walter. She was just reaching the end of his outline of study, and she was already writing for the papers! Her pride was somewhat tempered as she reread her story and realized how much it had been improved by Mr. Brace's vigorous slashing.
Her new sense of importance became almost oppressive when, a few days later, they offered her a contract at what seemed to her a magnificent salary—to conduct a column on Working-girls' Worries.
Mabel also was enthusiastic about it. It was a great and unexpected chance to give publicity to their work of organizing women. The Star had more than a million readers. Yetta could never have hoped to reach so large an audience with her voice.
But when Isadore saw the flaring posters which blossomed out on the East Side, announcing that Yetta Rayefsky was writing daily and exclusively for The Evening Star, he was mightily disturbed. Such conscienceless journalism as Mr. Karner's seemed to him the worst crime of our civilization. He could hardly believe that Yetta had thrown in her lot with it. It shook him out of his reserve, and he rushed over to her room.
In her new pride, in the excitement of her new career, Yetta seemed more disturbingly beautiful to him than ever. Face to face with her he forgot all his carefully thought-out arguments.
"Oh, Yetta," he blurted out, "is it really true that you're going to work on that dirty paper?"