Hal frowned. "Do you think there can be any use—"
"Please," she begged, with uplifted eyes of entreaty. "She—she didn't tell me the truth about that interview with your reporter. It was true; but she made me think it wasn't. She confessed to me, and she feels very badly. So do I. I believed that you had deliberately made that up, about her saying that she didn't turn back because she wanted to catch a train. I believed, too, that the editorial was written after our—our talk. I'm sorry."
Hal stood above her, looking rather stern, and a little old and worn, she thought.
"If that is an apology, it is accepted," he said with surface politeness.
To him she was, in that moment, a light-minded woman apologizing for the petty misdeed, and paying no heed to the graver wrong that she had done him. Jeannette Willard could have set him right in a word; could have shown him what the girl felt, unavowedly to herself but with underlying conviction, that for so great an offense no apology could suffice; nothing short of complete surrender. But Mrs. Willard was not there to help out. She was waiting hopefully, outside.
"And that is all?" he said, after a pause, with just a shade of contempt in his voice.
"All," she said lightly, "unless you choose to tell me how the 'Clarion' is getting on."
"As well as could be expected. We pay high for our principles. But thus far we've held to them. You should read the paper."
"I do."
"To expect your approval would be too much, I suppose."