"When I met Alan's father," she went on, "I knew nothing of his--his work. We met abroad, where I had been living with my mother. That was twenty-six years ago, when the _Radiator_ was less--less notorious than it is now. I knew my husband owned a newspaper--a great newspaper--and nothing more. I had never seen a copy of the _Radiator_; I had no notion what it stood for, in politics--or in other ways. We were married in Europe, and a few months afterward we came to live here. People were already beginning to talk about the _Radiator_. My husband, on leaving college, had bought it with some money an old uncle had left him, and the public at first was merely curious to see what an ambitious, stirring young man without any experience of journalism was going to make out of his experiment. They found first of all that he was going to make a great deal of money out of it. I found that out too. I was so happy in other ways that it didn't make much difference at first; though it was pleasant to be able to help my mother, to be generous and charitable, to live in a nice house, and wear the handsome gowns he liked to see me in. But still it didn't really count--it counted so little that when, one day, I learned what the _Radiator_ was, I would have gone out into the streets barefooted rather than live another hour on the money it brought in...." Her voice sank, and she paused to steady it. The girl at her side did not speak or move. "I shall never forget that day," she began again. "The paper had stripped bare some family scandal--some miserable bleeding secret that a dozen unhappy people had been struggling to keep out of print--that _would_ have been kept out if my husband had not--Oh, you must guess the rest! I can't go on!" She felt a hand on hers. "You mustn't go on, Mrs. Quentin," the girl whispered.