She gave him a parting look, as he stood pale, quivering, yet controlled, behind his desk. In this last moment she remembered the gallant fight this man had made against Blind Charlie Peck; she remembered that fragrant, far-distant night of June when he had asked her to marry him; and she felt as though she were gazing for the last time upon a dear dead face. "I'm sorry--oh, so sorry!" she said tremulously. "Good-by." And turning, she walked with bowed head out of his office. CHAPTER VIII THE EDITOR OF THE _EXPRESS_ Katherine stumbled down into the dusty, quivering heat of the Square. She was still awed and dumfounded by her discovery; she could not as yet realize its full significance and whither it would lead; but her mind was a ferment of thoughts that were unfinished and questions that did not await reply. How had a man once so splendid come to sell his soul for money or ambition? What would Westville think and do, Westville who worshipped him, if it but knew the truth? How was she to give battle to an antagonist, so able in himself, so powerfully supported by the public? What a strange caprice of fate it was that had given her as the man she must fight, defeat, or be defeated by, her former idol, her former lover! Shaken with emotion, her mind shot through with these fragmentary thoughts, she turned into a side street. But she had walked beneath its withered maples no more than a block or two, when her largest immediate problem, her father's trial on the morrow, thrust itself into her consciousness, and the pressing need of further action drove all this spasmodic speculation from her mind. She began to think upon what she should next do. Almost instantly her mind darted to the man whom she had definitely connected with the plot against her father, Arnold Bruce, and she turned back toward the Square, afire with a new idea. She had made great advance through suddenly, though unintentionally, confronting Blake with knowledge of his guilt. Might she not make some further advance, gain some new clue, by confronting Bruce in similar manner? Ten minutes after she had left the office of Harrison Blake, Katherine entered the _Express_ Building. From the first floor sounded a deep and continuous thunder; that afternoon's issue was coming from the press. She lifted her skirts and gingerly mounted the stairway, over which the _Express's_ "devil" was occasionally seen to make incantations with the stub of an undisturbing broom.