"Say, the reverse reason. Because I belong so entirely to you that nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you. Can't you realize and believe?"

"No; I shouldn't be jealous of the paper," she mused, ignoring his appeal. Then, with a sudden transition: "I like your Russell Edmonds. Am I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?"

"Of mind and soul. You would be the one to see it.

'.............the nobleness that lies Sleeping but never dead in other men, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own'"--

he quoted, smiling into her eyes.

"Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?"

"Often. He's my main and only reliance, politically."

"Only politically? Does he ever comment on other editorials? The one on Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?"

Banneker was faintly surprised. "No. Why should he? Did you discuss that with him?"

"Indeed not! I wouldn't discuss that particular editorial with any one but you."

He moved uneasily. "Aren't you attaching undue importance to a very trivial subject? You know that was half a joke, anyway."

"Was it?" she murmured. "Probably I take it too seriously. But--but Harvey Wheelwright came into one of our early talks, almost our first about real things. When I began to discover you; when 'The Voices' first sang to us. And he wasn't one of the Voices, exactly, was he?"

"He? He's a bray! But neither was Sears-Roebuck one of the Voices. Yet you liked my editorial on that."

"I adored it! You believed what you were writing. So you made it beautiful."

"Nothing could make Harvey Wheelwright beautiful. But, at least, you'll admit I made him--well, appetizing." His face took on a shade. "Love's labor lost, too," he added. "We never did run the Wheelwright serial, you know."

"Why?"

"Because the infernal idiot had to go and divorce a perfectly respectable, if plain and middle-aged wife, in order to marry a quite scandalous Chicago society flapper."

"What connection has that with the serial?"

"Don't you see? Wheelwright is the arch-deacon of the eternal proprieties and pieties. Purity of morals. Hearth and home. Faithful unto death, and so on. Under that sign he conquers--a million pious and snuffy readers, per book. Well, when he gets himself spread in the Amalgamated Wire dispatches, by a quick divorce and a hair-trigger marriage, puff goes his piety--and his hold on his readers. We just quietly dropped him."

"But his serial was just as good or as bad as before, wasn't it?"

"Certainly not! Not for our purposes. He was a dead wolf with his sheep's wool all smeared and spotted. You'll never quite understand the newspaper game, I'm afraid, lady of my heart."

"How brown your eyes are, Ban!" said Io.

CHAPTER XII

Politics began to bubble in The Patriot office with promise of hotter upheavals to come. The Laird administration had shown its intention of diverting city advertising, and Marrineal had countered in the news columns by several minor but not ineffective exposures of weak spots in the city government. Banneker, who had on the whole continued to support the administration in its reform plans, decided that a talk with Willis Enderby might clarify the position and accordingly made an evening appointment with him at his house. Judge Enderby opened proceedings with typical directness of attack.

"When are _you_ going to turn on us, Banneker?"

"That's a cheerful question," retorted the young man good-humoredly, "considering that it is you people who have gone back on The Patriot."

"Were any pledges made on our part?" queried Enderby.

Banneker replied with some spirit: "Am I talking with counsel under retainer or with a personal friend?"

"Quite right. I apologize," said the imperturbable Enderby. "Go on."

"It isn't the money loss that counts, so much as the slap in the face to the paper. It's a direct repudiation. You must realize that."

"I'm not wholly a novice in politics."

"But I am, practically."

"Not so much that you can't see what Marrineal would be at."

"Mr. Marrineal has not confided in me."

"Nor in me," stated the lawyer grimly. "I don't need his confidence to perceive his plans."

"What do you believe them to be?"

No glimmer of a smile appeared on the visage of Judge Enderby as he countered, "Am I talking with a representative of The Patriot or--"

"All right," laughed Banneker. "_Touche!_ Assume that Marrineal has political ambitions. Surely that lies within the bounds of propriety."

"Depends on how he pushes them. Do you read The Patriot, Banneker?"

The editor of The Patriot smiled.

"Do you approve its methods in, let us say, the political articles?"

"I have no control over the news columns."

"Don't answer my question," said the lawyer with a fine effect of patience, long-suffering and milky-mild, "if it in any way discommodes you."

"It all comes to this," disclosed Banneker. "If the mayor turns on us, we can't lie down under the whip and we won't. We'll hit back."

"Of course."

"Editorially, I mean."

"I understand. At least the editorials will be a direct method of attack, and an honest one. I may assume that much?"

"Have you ever seen anything in the editorial columns of The Patriot that would lead you to assume otherwise?"