Rev. Mr. Dayne was sitting bowed over his desk, his strong head clamped in his hands, the morning Post crumpled on the floor beside him.  He did not look up when his assistant entered the office; his response to her “Good-morning” was of the briefest.  Sharlee understood.  It was only the corporeal husk of her friend that was seated at the desk.  All the rest of him was down at Ephesus fighting with the beasts, and grimly resolved to give no sign from the arena till he had set his foot upon their necks for the glory of God and the honor of his cloth.

Sharlee herself did not feel conversational.  In silence she took off her things, and, going over to her own desk, began opening the mail.  In an hour, maybe more, maybe less, the Secretary stood at her side, his kind face calm as ever.

“Well,” he said quietly, “how do you explain it?”

Sharlee’s eyes offered him bay-leaves for his victory.

“There is a suggestion about it,” said she, still rather white, “of thirty pieces of silver.”

“Oh!  We can hardly say that.  Let us give him the benefit of the doubt, as long as there can be any doubt.  Let us view it for the present as a death-bed repentance.”

Him?  Which did he mean?

“No,” said Sharlee, “it is not possible to view it that way.  The Post has been as familiar with the arguments all along, from beginning to end, as you or I. It could not be honestly converted any more than you could.  This,” said she, struggling to speak calmly, “is treachery.”

“Appearances, I am sorry to say, are much that way.  Still—­I think we should not condemn the paper unheard.”

“Then why not have the hearing at once?  An explanation is—­”

“I shall seek none,” interrupted Mr. Dayne, quietly.  “The Post must volunteer it, if it has any to offer.  Of course,” he went on, “we know nothing of the history of that editorial now.  Of one thing, however, I feel absolutely certain; that is, that it was published without the knowledge of Mr. West.  Developments may follow....  As for instance a shake-up in the staff.”

That settled it.  This good man whom she admired so much had not entertained a doubt that the editorial was from the brain and pen of Mr. Queed.

She said painfully:  “As to the effect upon the—­the reformatory—­”

“It is killed,” said Mr. Dayne, and went away to his desk.

Sharlee turned in her desk-chair and looked out of the rain-blurred windows.

Through and beyond the trees of the park, over ridges of roofs and away to the west and north, she saw the weatherbeaten Post building, its distant gray tower cutting mistily out of the dreary sky.  From where she sat she could just pick out, as she had so often noticed before, the tops of the fifth-floor row of windows, the windows from which the Post’s editorial department looked out upon a world with which it could not keep faith.  Behind one of those windows at this moment, in all likelihood, sat the false friend who had cut down the reformatory from behind.