The Grain Of Dust

Dorothea Hallowell is a clerk in a New York law office. She's hard working and pleasant, but she has an undeserved reputation for being rather loose. It's nothing but office gossip -- and still, she becomes fed up with. If she's going to be treated like that, she ought at least to reap the rewards of it. . . . So she allows Frederick Norman, a lawyer in the office and a married man, to pursue her. But what she finds in the end is not the vicarious giddiness that she thought she'd feel -- quite the contrary, it's something much more sinister. . . .

David Graham Philips was an American journalist and novelist. He had a reputation for being a muckracker, having written several articles on politics that offended both the Republican and Democratic parties. "The Grain of Dust" was made into a movie in 1928.