"In any case, he isn't responsible for The Patriot. He can't help it."

"Don't be so cryptic, Cousin Billy. Can't help what? What is wrong with the paper?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"But I want to understand," said imperious Io.

"As a basis to understanding, you'd have to read the paper."

"I have. Everyday. All of it."

He gave her a quick, reckoning look which she sustained with a slight deepening of color. "The advertisements, too?" She nodded. "What do you think of them?"

"Some of them are too disgusting to discuss."

"Did it occur to you to compare them with the lofty standards of our young friend's editorials?"

"What has he to do with the advertisements?" she countered.

"Assume, for the sake of the argument, that he has nothing to do with them. You may have noticed a recent editorial against race-track gambling, with the suicide of a young bank messenger who had robbed his employer to pay his losses as text."

"Well? Surely that kind of editorial makes for good."

"Being counsel for that bank, I happen to know the circumstances of the suicide. The boy had pinned his faith to one of the race-track tipsters who advertise in The Patriot to furnish a list of sure winners for so much a week."

"Do you suppose that Mr. Banneker knew that?"

"Probably not. But he knows that his paper takes money for publishing those vicious advertisements."

"Suppose he couldn't help it?"

"Probably he can't."

"Well, what would you have him do? Stop writing the editorials? I think it is evidence of his courage that he should dare to attack the evils which his own paper fosters."

"That's one view of it, certainly," replied Enderby dryly. "A convenient view. But there are other details. Banneker is an ardent advocate of abstinence, 'Down with the Demon Rum!' The columns of The Patriot reek with whiskey ads. The same with tobacco."

"But, Cousin Billy, you don't believe that a newspaper should shut out liquor and tobacco advertisements, do you?"

The lawyer smiled patiently. "Come back on the track, Io," he invited.

"That isn't the point. If a newspaper preaches the harm in these habits, it shouldn't accept money for exploiting them. Look further. What of the loan-shark offers, and the blue-sky stock propositions, and the damnable promises of the consumption and cancer quacks? You can't turn a page of The Patriot without stumbling on them. There's a smell of death about that money."

"Don't all the newspapers publish the same kind of advertisements?"

argued the girl.

"Certainly not. Some won't publish an advertisement without being satisfied of its good faith. Others discriminate less carefully. But there are few as bad as The Patriot."

"If Mr. Banneker were your client, would you advise him to resign?" she asked shrewdly.

Enderby winced and chuckled simultaneously. "Probably not. It is doubtful whether he could find another rostrum of equal influence. And his influence is mainly for good. But since you seem to be interested in newspapers, Io"--he gave her another of his keen glances--"from The Patriot you can make a diagnosis of the disease from which modern journalism is suffering. A deep-seated, pervasive insincerity. At its worst, it is open, shameless hypocrisy. The public feels it, but is too lacking in analytical sense to comprehend it. Hence the unformulated, instinctive, universal distrust of the press. 'I never believe anything I read in the papers.' Of course, that is both false and silly. But the feeling is there; and it has to be reckoned with one day. From this arises an injustice, that the few papers which are really upright, honest, and faithful to their own standards, are tainted in the public mind with the double-dealing of the others. Such as The Patriot."

"You use The Patriot for your purposes," Io pointed out.

"When it stands for what I believe right. I only wish I could trust it."

"Then you _really_ feel that you can't trust Mr. Banneker?"

"Ah; we're back to that!" thought Enderby with uneasiness. Aloud he said: "It's a very pretty problem whether a writer who shares the profits of a hypocritical and dishonest policy can maintain his own professional independence and virtue. I gravely doubt it."

"I don't," said Io, and there was pride in her avowal.

"My dear," said the Judge gravely, "what does it all mean? Are you letting yourself become interested in Errol Banneker?"

Io raised clear and steady eyes to the concerned regard of her old friend. "If I ever marry again, I shall marry him."

"You're not going to divorce poor Delavan?" asked the other quickly.

"No. I shall play the game through," was the quiet reply.

For a space Willis Enderby sat thinking. "Does Banneker know your--your intentions?"

"No."

"You mustn't let him, Io."

"He won't know the intention. He may know the--the feeling back of it."

A slow and glorious flush rose in her face, making her eyes starry. "I don't know that I can keep it from him, Cousin Billy. I don't even know that I want to. I'm an honest sort of idiot, you know."

"God grant that he may prove as honest!" he half whispered.

Presently Banneker, bearing a glass of champagne and some pate sandwiches for Io, supplanted the lawyer.

"Are you the devotee of toil that common report believes, Ban?" she asked him lazily. "They say that you write editorials with one hand and welcome your guests with the other."

"Not quite that," he answered. "To-night I'm not thinking of work. I'm not thinking of anything but you. It's very wonderful, your being here."

"But I want you to think of work. I want to see you in the very act.

Won't you write an editorial for me?"

He shook his head. "This late? That would be cruelty to my secretary."

"I'll take it down for you. I'm fairly fast on the typewriter."

"Will you give me the subject, too?"

"No more than fair," she admitted. "What shall it be? It ought to be something with memories in it. Books? Poetry?" she groped. "I've got it!

Your oldest, favorite book. Have you forgotten?"