“That’s different—I’d have done that.”
“Would you?”
“Can’t you believe that of me, Marcia? Do you think I’m a coward?”
“Falsehood is always cowardly,” she said very low. “Perhaps I am abnormal about it. I cannot help it. I was bred that way.”
“But try to be fair to me,” he pleaded.
“Fair to you? I was more than that. I could not believe that you had written it. When I went into Eli Wade’s shop that morning there was a strange, violent white-haired little man there with him—”
“Nick Milliken.”
“Yes. He said what—what you have said; that it was all part of the day’s work; that you were no worse than any other reporter. He said that you had boasted to him that nobody could control your pen.”
Jeremy groaned. “It’s true.”
“And then he laughed, and said things about you that I would not endure to hear—as I told him.”