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.
Which was it? Oh, was not Mr. Dayne right, as he always was? Where was
there any room for doubt?
Long before Sharlee knew Charles Gardiner West personally, when she was
a little girl and he just out of college, she had known him by report as
a young man of fine ideals, exalted character, the very pattern of
stainless honor. Her later intimate knowledge of him, she told herself,
had fully borne out the common reputation.
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