"Well then I'm off," I said.
She looked up from the hooks she was snapping together and said:
"Before you go tell me who you are?"
"There's no need for that," I answered, thinking she'd probably never see me again. "I'm just someone that blew in tonight for a minute and who's going like she came."
"Someone I'll never forget," she said, "and that some day, if all goes well, I'll be able to pay back."
I was afraid she was going to get grateful again and I couldn't stand any more of that. So with a quick "good-bye" away I went, up the hall, opening the door without a sound, and stealing down the stairs as soft as a robber.
Out in the street I stopped and reconnoitered. There was no one in sight except a policeman lounging dreary on the next corner. Across from the apartment was the entrance of a little shop—tobacco and light literature—and into that I crept, squeezing back against the glass door. I couldn't be at peace till I saw her leave and for fifteen or twenty minutes I stood there watching the lights in her windows. Then suddenly they began to go out, across the front and along down the side, till every pane was black. A few minutes later, she came down the steps carrying a bag. She stopped close to where I was, and hailed a car, and not till I saw it start with her sitting by the door, did I steal out of my hiding place and sprint up the street to Madison Avenue.
When I reached home I was shivering and wild-eyed, for if Babbitts was there what could I say to him? He wasn't—thank Heaven!—and cold as ice, feeling as if I'd been through a mangle, I crawled into bed.
There wasn't much sleep for me that night. About all I could say to myself was that I'd saved Jack. But the others—Oh, the others! I couldn't get them out of my mind. They'd come in a procession across the dark and look at me sad and reproachful. Mr. Whitney, who'd done everything in the world for me, and Mr. George, who could put on such side, but had always been so kind and cordial, and O'Mally, who'd told Babbitts the case was going to make him, and Babbitts—Oh, Babbitts!
I rolled over on the pillow and cried scalding, bitter tears. It wasn't only the scoop—it was that I'd have a secret from him forever—him that up to now had known every thought in my mind, had been like the other half of me. They say virtue is its own reward, and I've always believed it. But that night I had the awful thought that maybe I'd done wrong, for all the reward I got was to feel like an outcast with a stone for a heart.