She hated the thought of it, and the taste of it,—but more than all she hated the future into which she dare no longer look. As she medicined her cowardice with the liquor she could not help marvelling at the seeming miracle, for, minute by minute, with each scalding small draught, her weak-heartedness ebbed away. She knew that later there would be stern exaction for that strength, but she had her grim work to do, and beggars can not always be choosers.
Then she gathered up her veil and hat and gloves, and once more made ready for her day’s enterprise. The pith-ball had passed from its period of revulsion to its period of attraction.
CHAPTER XXI
Frances Candler’s fingers trembled a little at the Guilford office desk as she took out her card and penciled beneath her name: “Representing the Morning Journal.”
She knew that Sunset Bryan’s success on the circuit, his midnight prodigalities, his bewildering lavishness of life, and his projected departure for New Orleans, had already brought the reporters buzzing about his apartments. Even as she lifted the blotter to dry the line she had written with such craven boldness, her eye fell on a well-thumbed card before her, bearing the inscription:
ALBERT ERIC SPAULDING
The Sunday Sun.
A moment later she had it in her white-gloved hand, with her own card discreetly hidden away, and in the most matter-of-fact of voices she was asking the busy clerk behind the desk if she could see Mr. Bryan.
“Mr. Bryan is a very late riser,” he explained.
“I know that,” she answered coolly, “but he’s expecting me, I think.”