Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/40

 her own. "He might be more loyal than I," she thought.

"I will do just as you say," said the other woman. She did not understand the sacrifice, but she knew what the decision meant to her. She dipped a towel in water and bathed her face and eyes. Then she took the newspaper woman's hands in her own and kissed them almost shyly.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you very much." The guard, who had been pacing the corridor, turned the key noisily in the lock, and the reporter passed out. She went back to whisper one more warning. "Do not let them put you on the stand."

She heard the door clang, and the key turn again, as she walked toward the warden's office. "That's good," she murmured, in grim self-abasement. "In another moment I should probably have been helping her through the window."

"So Mrs. Brandow has been acquitted," said the managing editor of "The