He recoiled before her quite as dramatically as she could have wished. "You wrote that!" he exclaimed. "I thought a man did that job."
She could not help a slight expression of pride in her work. "It was mine, every word of it. I was terribly vindictive, I admit; but you must know I had some provocation. Let me tell you? Will you listen to me? Please do! I'm not so heartless as I seemed in that article, and I cannot rest till I have made my peace with you."
Her voice, her pale face, her intense eyes, and her tense contralto voice softened his resentment.
"I'll listen, but you can't expect me to forgive a thing like that."
"May I sit?"
"Certainly," he answered, but remained standing, as if to retain his guard.
"Don't condemn me altogether," she pleaded. "Wait till you know how much reason I had to hate the whole brood of clairvoyants, seers, and psychics. My dear old grandmother was an easy mark for the cheapest of them, and I, who paid for her nurse out of my own thin little purse, and waited upon her night and day, had a right to consider her small fortune my own. It wasn't much, but it was enough to pay the cost of a flat, and to see it all going to fakers and greasy palmists—well, it was too much. It made a crusader of me—and it would have made one of you. It was not a question of your mother—alone. I went to our managing editor at last, and told him my story. I made it clear to him that the city was full of these harpies who prey on poor old women like my grandmother. 'They ought to be driven out of town,' I said. 'Cut loose,' he said; and I did. My article on your mother was honest. I believed her to be simply another one of the same sort of impostors. I took her just like three or four others whose methods I knew, and I got my cousin, Frank Aiken, to bring suit against her. I thought she was a crook. I feel differently to-day. Since talking with Judge Bartol and Mr. Stinchfield (I handled both those assignments) I've changed my estimate of her. I have written a page article vindicating her. I've come to tell you that her death in that cage has changed the situation for me. I am convinced that she was sincere, and I want to humble myself before you, her son, and ask your forgiveness. I know you feel more like killing me, but here I am—I couldn't rest without letting you know that I need your pardon."
Her plea, swift, voiced in music, and illustrated by her pale face, glowing eyes, and sensitive lips, powerfully affected him. He towered over her in savage silence for a little while, then with effort he said: "I don't see how I can do anything to you, for I felt the same way—I mean I didn't believe in my mother's business."
She became radiant. "Didn't you?"
"No. Up to the very moment when that red lamp was lit I could not believe in her. I couldn't help doubting—even now I need the photographs to bolster up my belief."