Was she in love with Marlowe? She thought so—or, at least, she was about to be. But she did not linger upon that. The luxury of being loved in a way that made her intensely happy was enough. She liked to think of his arms clasping her. She liked him to touch her. She liked to remember that look of exalted passion in his eyes, and to know that it was glowing there for her.
The late afternoon brought news that the strike had been settled by a compromise. Within an hour the New York special correspondents were on the way home. At Philadelphia the next morning Emily came into the restaurant car. “This way, Miss Bromfield,” said the steward, with a low bow. She wondered how he knew her. She noticed that the answering smiles she got as she spoke to the newspaper men she had met at Furnaceville were broader than the occasion seemed to warrant. She glanced at herself in the mirror to see whether omission or commission in dressing was the cause. Then she took the seat Marlowe had reserved for her, opposite himself.
“There were three of us in the dressing-room making it as disagreeable for each other as possible after the usual feminine fashion,” she began, and her glance fell upon the first page of the Democrat of the day before, which Marlowe was holding up. She gasped and stared. “Why!” she exclaimed, the red flaring up in her face, “where did they get it? It’s disgraceful!”
“It” was a large reproduction of a pen and ink sketch of herself. Under “it” in big type was the line, “Emily Bromfield, the Democrat’s Correspondent at the Strike.” Beside “it” under a “scare-head” was the main story of the strike, and the last line of the heading read, “By Emily Bromfield.” Then followed her account of what she had seen from the parlour window. What with astonishment, pleasure, and mortification over this sudden brazen blare of publicity for herself and her work, she was on the verge of a nervous outburst.
“Be careful,” said Marlowe. “They’re all looking at you. What I want to know is where did they get that sketch of you in a dreamy, thoughtful attitude at a desk covered with papers. It looks like an idyll of a woman journalist. All the out-of-town papers will be sure to copy that. But where did our people get it?”
Just then Camp came through on his way to the smoking car. “Who drew this, Camp?” asked Marlowe, stopping him.
Camp looked embarrassed and grinned. “I made it one day in the office,” he said to Emily. “They must have fished it out of my desk in the art room.”
Emily did not wish to hurt his feelings, so she concealed her irritation. Marlowe said: “A splendid piece of work! Lucky they knew about it and got it out.”
“Thanks,” said Camp, looking appealingly at Emily. “You’re not offended?” he asked.
“It gave me a turn,” Emily replied evasively. Camp took her smile for approval, thanked her and went on.