"She says she can't marry me. Good Heaven, Elias, you don't know what a blow it was to her. It almost killed her. And my own father—oh, it was terrible!"
Elias Droom did not tell him—nor had he ever told anyone but himself—that the woman he loved was the boy's mother. He loved her before and after she married James Bansemer. He never had faltered in his love and reverence for her.
Graydon waited in his rooms until the old man returned with the morning papers. As Droom placed them on the table beside him, he grinned cheerfully.
"Big headlines, eh? But these are not a circumstance to what they will be. These articles deal only with the great mystery concerning the birth of one of the 'most beautiful and popular young women in Chicago.' Wait—wait until the Bansemer smash comes to reinforce the story! Fine reading, eh!"
"Don't, Elias, for Heaven's sake, don't!" cried the young man. "Have you no soft spot in your heart? God, I believe you enjoy all this. Look! Look what it says about her! The whole shameful story of that scene last night! There was a reporter there when it happened."
Together they read the papers. Their comments varied. The young man writhed and groaned under the revelations that were going to the public; the old clerk chuckled and philosophised.
Every one of these papers prophesied other and more sensational developments before the day was over. It promised to be war to the knife between David Cable, president of the Pacific, Lakes & Atlantic, and the man Bansemer. In each interview with Cable he was quoted as saying emphatically that the adoption of Jane had been made with his knowledge and consent. The supposed daughter was the only one to whom the startling revelations were a surprise. There also was mention of the fact that the young woman had immediately broken her engagement with James Bansemer's son. There were pictures of the leading characters in the drama.
"I can't stay in Chicago after all this," exclaimed Graydon, springing to his feet, his hands clenched in despair. "To be pointed out and talked about! To be pitied and scorned! To see the degradation of my own father! I'll go—anywhere, just so it is away from Chicago."
Droom forgot his desire to scoff. His sardonic smile dwindled into a ludicrously, pathetic look of dismay. He begged the young man to think twice before he did anything "foolish." "In any event," he implored, "let me get you some breakfast, or at least, a cup of coffee."
In the end he helped Graydon into his coat and glided off down Wells Street after him. It was seven o'clock, and every corner newsstand glowered back at them with black frowns as they looked at the piles of papers. Two rough-looking men walking ahead of them were discussing the sensation in a lewd, brutal way. A saloon-keeper shouted to them: "It don't always happen over on de West Side, does it?"