Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/38

 were at the highest tension, and you were present when they snapped. That's all. I am quite willing to bear the consequences of what I have done."

For a moment there was silence in the cell. The reporter looked through the barred door, out into the whitewashed corridor where a narrow shaft of sunlight fell. To her excited imagination there was something prophetic in the sight. Far down at the end of the hall, a scrub-woman hummed a street air as she worked. Near her loitered the only guard the little prison afforded. The whole life of Helen Brandow—if, indeed, she were allowed to live at all—would be passed in some such place as this if "The Searchlight" published that story. If it did not— Ruth Herrick set her teeth, and stared unseeingly at the opposite wall. If it did not, it would be because she withheld the news, to which, by every claim of loyalty, her newspaper was entitled. She withhold it!—she, "one of the most reliable members of the staff!" Was it not only last night the chief had said so? Something hot and wet filled her eyes.