"But you know it isn't. That's the delightful part of you; you do know things like that."

"Also I know better than to risk my peace of mind."

"Don't lie to me, my dear," she said softly. "There's some one else."

He made no reply.

"You see, you don't deny it." Had he denied it, she would have said: "Of course you'd deny it!" the methods of feminine detective logic being so devised.

"No; I don't deny it."

"But you don't want to talk about her."

"No."

"It's as bad as that?" she commiserated gently. "Poor Ban! But you're young. You'll get over it." Her brooding eyes suddenly widened. "Or perhaps you won't," she amended with deeper perceptiveness. "Have you been trying me as an anodyne?" she demanded sternly.

Banneker had the grace to blush. Instantly she rippled into laughter.

"I've never seen you at a loss before. You look as sheepish as a stage-door Johnnie when his inamorata gets into the other fellow's car.

Ban, you never hung about stage-doors, did you? I think it would be good for you; tame your proud spirit and all that. Why don't you write one of your 'Eban' sketches on John H. Stage-Door?"

"I'll do better than that. Give me of your wisdom on the subject and I'll write an interview with you for Tittle-Tattle."

"Do! And make me awfully clever, please. Our press-agent hasn't put anything over for weeks. He's got a starving wife and seven drunken children, or something like that, and, as he'll take all the credit for the interview and even claim that he wrote it unless you sign it, perhaps it'll get him a raise and he can then buy the girl who plays the manicure part a bunch of orchids. _He_'d have been a stage-door Johnnie if he hadn't stubbed his toe and become a press-agent."

"All right," said Banneker. "Now: I'll ask the stupid questions and you give the cutie answers."

It was two o'clock when Miss Betty Raleigh, having seen the gist of all her witty and profound observations upon a strange species embodied in three or four scrawled notes on the back of a menu, rose and observed that, whereas acting was her favorite pastime, her real and serious business was sleep. At her door she held her face up to him as straightforwardly as a child. "Good luck to you, dear boy," she said softly. "If I ever were a fortune-teller, I would say that your star was for happiness and success."

He bent and kissed her cheek lightly. "I'll have my try at success," he said. "But the other isn't so easy."

"You'll find them one and the same," was her parting prophecy.

Inured to work at all hours, Banneker went to the small, bare room in his apartment which he kept as a study, and sat down to write the interview. Angles of dawn-light had begun to irradiate the steep canyon of the street by the time he had finished. He read it over and found it good, for its purposes. Every line of it sparkled. It had the effervescent quality which the reading public loves to associate with stage life and stage people. Beyond that, nothing. Banneker mailed it to Miss Westlake for typing, had a bath, and went to bed. At noon he was at The Ledger office, fresh, alert, and dispassionately curious to ascertain the next resolution of the mix-up between the paper and himself.

Nothing happened; at least, nothing indicative. Mr. Greenough's expression was as flat and neutral as the desk over which he presided as he called Banneker's name and said to him:

"Mr. Horace Vanney wishes to relieve his soul of some priceless information. Will you call at his office at two-thirty?"

It was Mr. Vanney's practice, whenever any of his enterprises appeared in a dubious or unfavorable aspect, immediately to materialize in print on some subject entirely unrelated, preferably an announcement on behalf of one of the charitable or civic organizations which he officially headed. Thus he shone forth as a useful, serviceable, and public-spirited citizen, against whom (such was the inference which the newspaper reader was expected to draw) only malignancy could allege anything injurious. In this instance his offering upon the altar of publicity, carefully typed and mimeographed, had just enough importance to entitle it to a paragraph of courtesy. After it was given out to those who called, Mr. Vanney detained Banneker.

"Have you read the morning papers, Mr. Banneker?"

"Yes. That's my business, Mr. Vanney."

"Then you can see, by the outbreak in Sippiac, to what disastrous results anarchism and fomented discontent lead."

"Depends on the point of view. I believe that, after my visit to the mills for you, I told you that unless conditions were bettered you'd have another and worse strike. You've got it."

"Fortunately it is under control. The trouble-makers and thugs have been taught a needed lesson."

"Especially the six-year-old trouble-making thug who was shot through the lungs from behind."

Mr. Vanney scowled. "Unfortunate. And the papers laid unnecessary stress upon that. Wholly unnecessary. Most unfair."

"You would hardly accuse The Ledger, at least, of being unfair to the mill interests."

"Yes. The Ledger's handling, while less objectionable than some of the others, was decidedly unfortunate."

Banneker gazed at him in stupefaction. "Mr. Vanney, The Ledger minimized every detail unfavorable to the mills and magnified every one which told against the strikers. It was only its skill that concealed the bias in every paragraph."

"You are not over-loyal to your employer, sir," commented the other severely.

"At least I'm defending the paper against your aspersions," returned Banneker.

"Most unfair," pursued Mr. Vanney. "Why publish such matter at all? It merely stirs up more discontent and excites hostility against the whole industrial system which has made this country great. And I give more copy to the newspaper men than any other public man in New York. It's rank ingratitude, that's what it is." He meditated upon the injurious matter. "I suppose we ought to have advertised," he added pensively.

"Then they'd let us alone as they do the big stores."

Banneker left the Vanney offices with a great truth illuminating his brain; to wit, that news, whether presented ingenuously or disingenuously, will always and inevitably be unpopular with those most nearly affected. For while we all read avidly what we can find about the other man's sins and errors, we all hope, for our own, the kindly mantle of silence. And because news always must and will stir hostility, the attitude of a public, any part of which may be its next innocent (or guilty) victim, is instinctively inimical. Another angle of the pariahdom of those who deal in day-to-day history, for Banneker to ponder.

Feeling a strong desire to get away from the troublous environment of print, Banneker was glad to avail himself of Densmore's invitation to come to The Retreat on the following Monday and try his hand at polo again. This time he played much better, his mallet work in particular being more reliable.

"You ride like an Indian," said Densmore to him after the scratch game, "and you've got no nerves. But I don't see where you got your wrist, except by practice."

"I've had the practice, some time since."

"But if you've only knocked about the field with stable-boys--"

"That's the only play I've ever had. But when I was riding range in the desert, I picked up an old stick and a ball of the owner's, and I've chased that ball over more miles of sand and rubble than you'd care to walk. Cactus plants make very fair goal posts, too; but the sand is tricky going for the ball."

Densmore whistled. "That explains it. Maitland says you'll make the club team in two years. Let us get together and fix you up some ponies,"

invited Densmore.

Banneker shook his head, but wistfully.

"Until you're making enough to carry your own."

"That might be ten years, in the newspaper business. Or never.

"Then get out of it. Let Old Man Masters find you something in the Street. You could get away with it," persuaded Densmore. "And he'll do anything for a polo-man."

"No, thank you. No paid-athlete job for mine. I'd rather stay a reporter."

"Come into the club, anyway. You can afford that. And at least you can take a mount on your day off."

"I'm thinking of another job where I'll have more time to myself than one day a week," confessed Banneker, having in mind possible magazine work. He thought of the pleasant remoteness of The Retreat. It was expensive; it would involve frequent taxi charges. But, as ever, Banneker had an unreasoning faith in a financial providence of supply.

"Yes: I'll come in," he said. "That is, if I can get in."