“What did he say?”
Larry gave the substance of the autobiography which Dick had volunteered.
“Part of that is more than the truth, part less than the truth,” Miss Sherwood remarked. “But this morning we were to have a real talk about your affairs, and let's get to the subject.”
She had motioned him to a chair beside the quaint old desk, and they were now sitting face to face. Isabel Sherwood looked as much the finished patrician as on the evening before, and with that easy, whimsical humor and the direct manner of the person who is sure of herself; and in the sober, disillusioning daylight she had no less of beauty than had seemed hers in the softer lighting of their first meeting. The clear, fresh face with its violet-blue eyes was gazing at him intently. Larry realized that she was looking into the very soul of him, and he sat silent during this estimate which he recognized she had the right to make.
“Mr. Hunt has written me the main facts about you, certainly the worst,” she said finally. “You need tell me nothing further, if you prefer not to do so; but it might be helpful if I knew more of the details.”
Larry felt that there was no information he was not willing to give this clear-eyed, charming woman; and so he told her all that had happened since his return from Sing Sing, including his falling in love with Maggie, the nature of their conflict, her departure into the ways of her ambition.
“You are certainly facing a lot of difficult propositions.” Miss Sherwood checked them off on her fingers. “The police are after you—your old friends are after you—you do not dare be caught. You want to clear yourself—you want to make a business success—you want to eradicate Maggie's present ambitions and remove her from her present influences.”
“That is the correct total,” said Larry.
“Certainly a large total! Of them all, which is the most important item?”
Larry considered. “Maggie,” he confessed. “But Maggie really includes all the others. To have any influence with her, I must get out of the power of the police, I must overcome her belief that I am a stool and a squealer, and I must prove to her that I can make a success by going straight.”