"Well! What do you see that looks likely for--What's the matter? Are you sick to-day?"

"No, I am quite well, thank you. I find very little in the news, though.

You notice that a digest of the railroad bill is given out?"

"Yes. You don't look a bit well, old fellow. You must take a holiday after the legislature goes. Yes, I'm going to take the hide off that bill. Or better yet--you. Don't you feel like shooting off some big guns at it?"

"Certainly, if you want me to. There is the farmers' convention, too.

And by the way, I'd like to leave as soon as you can fill my place."

West dropped scissors, pencil, and paper and stared at him with dismayed amazement. "_Leave!_ Why, you are never thinking of _leaving_ me!"

"Yes. I'd--like to leave. I thought I ought to tell you this morning, so that you can at once make your plans as to my successor."

"But my dear fellow! I can't let you _leave me!_ You've no idea how I value your a.s.sistance, how I've come to lean and depend upon you at every point. I never dreamed you were thinking of this. What's the matter? What have you got on your mind?"

"I think," said Queed, unhappily, "that I should be better satisfied off the paper than on it."

"Why, confound you--it's the money!" said West, with a sudden relieved laugh. "Why didn't you tell me, old fellow? You're worth five times what they're paying you--five times as much as I am for that matter--and I can make the directors see it. Trust me to make them raise you to my salary at the next meeting."

"Thank you--but no, my salary is quite satisfactory."

West frowned off into s.p.a.ce, looking utterly bewildered. "Of course," he said in a troubled voice, "you have a perfect right to resign without saying a word. I haven't the smallest right to press you for an explanation against your will. But--good Lord! Here we've worked together side by side, day after day, for nearly a year, pretty good friends, as I thought, and--well, it hurts a little to have you put on your hat and walk out without a word. I wish you would tell me what's wrong. There's nothing I wouldn't do, if I could, to fix it and keep you."

The eyes of the two men met across the table, and it was Queed's that faltered and fell.

"Well," he said, obviously embarra.s.sed, "I find that I am out of sympathy with the policy of the paper."

"Oh-h-ho!" said West, slowly and dubiously. "Do you mean my article on the reformatory?"

"Yes--I do."

"Why, my dear fellow!"

West paused, his handsome eyes clouded, considering how best he might put the matter to overcome most surely the singular scruples of his a.s.sistant.

"Let's take it this way, old fellow. Suppose that my standpoint in that article was diametrically wrong. I am sure I could convince you that it was not, but admit, for argument's sake, that it was. Do you feel that the appearance in the paper of an article with which you don't agree makes it necessary for you, in honor, to resign?"

"No, certainly not--"

"Is it that you don't like my turning down one of your articles and printing one of my own instead? I didn't know you objected to that, old fellow. You see--while your judgment is probably a hanged sight better than mine, after all I am the man who is held responsible, and I am paid a salary to see that my opinions become the opinions of the _Post_."

"It is entirely right that your opinions--"

"Then wherein have I offended? Be frank with me, like a good fellow, I beg you!"

Queed eyed him strangely. Was the editor's inner vision really so curiously astigmatic?

"I look at it this way," he said, in a slow, controlled voice. "The _Post_ has said again and again that _this_ legislature must establish a reformatory. That was the burden of a long series of editorials, running back over a year, which, as I thought, had your entire approval. Now, at the critical moment, when it was only necessary to say once more what had been said a hundred times before, the _Post_ suddenly turns about and, in effect, authorizes this legislature not to establish the reformatory. The House killed the bill just now. Bangor quoted from the _Post_ editorial. There can be no doubt, of course, that it turned a number of votes--enough to have safely carried the bill."

West looked disturbed and unhappy.

"But if we find out that this legislature is so drained by inescapable expenses that it simply cannot provide the I money? Suppose the State had been swept by a plague? Suppose there was a war and a million of unexpected expenses had suddenly dropped on us from the clouds? Wouldn't you agree that circ.u.mstances altered cases, and that, under such circ.u.mstances, everything that was not indispensable to the State's existence would have to go over?"

Queed felt like answering West's pepper-fire of casuistry by throwing Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his determination to avoid a "scene," he felt his bottled-up indignation rising. A light showed in his stone-gray eyes.

"Can't you really see that these circ.u.mstances are not in the least like those? Did you do me the courtesy to read what I wrote about this so-called 'economy argument' last night?"

"Certainly," said West, surprised by the other's tone. "But clever as it was, it was not based, in my opinion, on a clear understanding of the facts as they actually exist. You and I stay so close inside of four walls here that we are apt to get out of touch with practical conditions. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get new facts, from a confidential and highly authoritative source. In the light of these--I wish I could explain them more fully to you, but I was pledged to secrecy--I am obliged to tell you that what you had written seemed to me altogether out of focus, unfair, and extreme."

"Did you get these facts, as you call them, from Plonny Neal?"

"As to that, I am at liberty to say nothing."

Queed, looking at him, saw that he had. He began to feel sorry for West.

"I would give four hundred and fifty dollars," he said slowly--"all the money that I happen to have--if you had told me last night that you meant to do this."

"I am awfully sorry," said West, with a touch of dignity, "that you take it so hard. But I a.s.sure you--"

"I know Plonny Neal even better than you do," continued Queed, "for I have known him as his social equal. He is laughing at you to-day."

West, of course, knew better than that. The remark confirmed his belief that Queed had brooded over the reformatory till he saw everything about it distorted and magnified.

"Well, old fellow," he said, without a trace of ill-humor in his voice or his manner, "then it is I he is laughing at--not you. That brings us right back to my point. If you feel, as I understand it, that the _Post_ is in the position of having deserted its own cause, I alone am the deserter. Don't you see that? Not only am I the editor of the paper, and so responsible for all that it says; but I wrote the article, on my own best information and judgment. Whatever consequences there are," said West, his thoughts on the consequences most likely to accrue to the saviour of the party, "I a.s.sume them all."

"A few people," said Queed, slowly, "know that I have been conducting this fight for the _Post_. They may not understand that I was suddenly superseded this morning. But of course it isn't that. It is simply a matter--"

"Believe me, it can all be made right. I shall take the greatest pleasure in explaining to your friends that I alone am responsible. I shall call to-day--right now--at--"

"I'm sorry," said Queed, abruptly, "but it is entirely impossible for me to remain."

West looked, and felt, genuinely distressed. "I wish," he said, "the old reformatory had never been born"; and he went on in a resigned voice: "Of course I can't keep you with a padlock and chain, but--for the life of me, I can't catch your point of view. To my mind it appears the honorable and courageous thing to correct a mistake, even at the last moment, rather than stand by it for appearance's sake."

"You see I don't regard our principles as a mistake."

But he went back to his office marveling at himself for the ease with which West had put him in the wrong.

For friendship's sake, West had meant to call at the Charities Department that day, and explain to his two friends there how his sense of responsibility to the larger good had made it necessary for him to inflict a momentary disappointment upon them. But this disturbing interview with his a.s.sistant left him not so sure that an immediate call would be desirable, after all. At the moment, both Dayne and the dearest girl in the world would naturally be feeling vexed over the failure of their plan; wouldn't it be the sensible and considerate thing to give them a little time to conquer their pique and compose themselves to see facts as they were?

The _Chronicle_ that afternoon finally convinced him that this would be the considerate thing. That offensive little busybody, which pretended to have been a champion of "this people's inst.i.tution" came out with a nasty editorial, ent.i.tled "The _Post's_ Latest Flop." "Flop" appeared to be an intensely popular word in the _Chronicle_ office. The article boldly taxed "our more or less esteemed contemporary" with the murder of the reformatory, and showed unpleasant freedom in employing such phrases as "instantaneous conversion," "treacherous friendship," "disgusting somersaulting," and the like. Next day, grown still more audacious, it had the hardihood to refer to the _Post_ as "The Plonny Neal organ."

Now, of course, the reformatory had not been in any sense a burning public "issue." Measures like this, being solid and really important, seldom interest the people. There was not the smallest popular excitement over the legislature's conduct, or the _Post's_. The _Chronicle's_ venomous remarks were dismissed as the usual "newspaper sc.r.a.p." All this West understood perfectly. Still, it was plain that a few enthusiasts, reformatory fanatics, were taking the first flush of disappointment rather hard. For himself, West reflected, he cared nothing about their clamor. Conscious of having performed an unparalleled service to his party, and thus to his State, he was willing to stand for a time the indignation of the ignorant, the obloquy of the malicious, even revolt and disloyalty among his own lieutenants. One day the truth about his disinterested patriotism would become known. For the present he would sit silent, calmly waiting at least until unjust resentment subsided and reason rea.s.serted her sway.

Many days pa.s.sed, as it happened, before West and the Secretary of Charities met; six days before West and the a.s.sistant Secretary met. On the sixth night, about half-past seven in the evening, he came unexpectedly face to face with Sharlee Weyland in the vestibule of Mrs.

Byrd, Senior's, handsome house. In the days intervening, Sharlee's state of mind had remained very much where it was on the first morning: only now the tiny open corner of her mind had shrunk to imperceptible dimensions. Of West she entertained not the smallest doubt; and she greeted him like the excellent friend she knew him to be.

There was a little dinner-dance at Mrs. Byrd's, for the season's _debutantes_. It became remembered as one of the most charming of all her charming parties. To the buds were added a sprinkling of older girls who had survived as the fittest, while among the swains a splendid catholicity as to age prevailed. A retinue of imported men, Caucasian at that, served dinner at six small tables, six at a table; the viands were fashioned to tickle tired epicures; there was vintage champagne such as kings quaff to pledge the comity of nations; Wissner's little band of artists, known to command its own price, divinely mingled melody with the rose-sweetness of the air. West, having dined beautifully, and lingered over coffee in the smoking-room among the last, emerged to find the polished floors crowded with an influx of new guests, come to enliven the dance. His was, as ever, a Roman progress; he stopped and was stopped everywhere; like a happy opportunist, he plucked the flowers as they came under his hand, and gayly whirled from one measure to another. So the glorious evening was half spent before, in an intermission, he found himself facing Sharlee Weyland, who was uncommonly well attended, imploring her hand for the approaching waltz.