"Three years ago one of the brightest and most scholarly editorial writers on all Park Row was practically thrown into the street by the paper for which he wrote, simply because they regarded him as a man who had gone stale, who had written himself out. To his paper he was a sucked lemon--a squeezed sponge. He was careless, good-natured, and easy-going; and when he came to me for my advice I asked him: Why not make a plunge, and write a book? He was not strong, however; in fact, I had always suspected that he was consumptive, and before his book was half written I saw clearly enough that he could not last long--at least not here in the East. So I, among others, persuaded him to go South--indeed, his doctor and his friends had to _drive_ him away. So off the lonely, broken fellow went to a little town in Kentucky to finish his beloved book. Ah, I see you follow me! I myself was on the point of sailing for Europe--I had to go--and was abroad for over a year. But during that last night we were together in New York he read to me what he had already written of his Great Work. I remember it more or less well--certain things about it stand out distinctly. Long before I came back to New York he was dead, poor fellow. I always thought that his book had died with him. For the first time yesterday I read The Silver Poppy." He paused, and looked at her searchingly. "Miss Vaughan, this dead man's book and The Silver Poppy are one and the same creation!" Her eyes were luminous, and were riveted on his face. All color had faded out of her cheek, and in the dim light her skin looked greenish-yellow and dead. She did not speak for several minutes. So it was all to end like this! That was the thought which pirouetted insanely up and down the foreground of her consciousness. "You--you don't mean," she cried huskily, "you can't mean that you believe I--I stole this book?" "You have refused to let me believe anything else," he answered, without a trace of feeling in his voice. "But you would not--you dare not make any such--any such absurd belief public!" she cried, leaning closer toward him. The room grew unendurably hot and close, and the walls seemed reeling and swaying about her. "You would not!" she cried again, in a higher key, putting her hand up to her head. Their eyes met. She saw but one thing, and that thing was that there dwelt no touch of kindness or commiseration on his face. "I have my duty to the dead to perform!" "But they're lies, all lies!" she cried shrilly. "That, you will have every chance to show when the time comes!" "They are lies!" she echoed, dazed. For just a moment he hesitated, perplexed, perhaps almost doubting. He stood before her with a face almost as white as her own. "Will you swear before God, your Maker, that this is the truth, and nothing but the truth?" She stood before him, with her eyes still fixed on his.