"You'll get in, with Poultney Masters for a backer. Otherwise, I'll tell you frankly, I think your business would keep you out, in spite of your polo."

"Densmore, there's something I've been wanting to put up to you."

Densmore's heavy brows came to attention. "Fire ahead."

"You were ready to beat me up when I came here to ask you certain questions."

"I was. Any fellow would be. You would."

"Perhaps. But suppose, through the work of some other reporter, a divorce story involving the sister and brother-in-law of some chap in your set had appeared in the papers."

"No concern of mine."

"But you'd read it, wouldn't you?"

"Probably."

"And if your paper didn't have it in and another paper did, you'd buy the other paper to find out about it."

"If I was interested in the people, I might."

"Then what kind of a sport are you, when you're keen to read about other people's scandals, but sore on any one who inquires about yours?"

"That's the other fellow's bad luck. If he--"

"You don't get my point. A newspaper is simply a news exchange. If you're ready to read about the affairs of others, you should not resent the activity of the newspaper that attempts to present yours. I'm merely advancing a theory."

"Damned ingenious," admitted the polo-player. "Make a reporter a sort of public agent, eh? Only, you see, he isn't. He hasn't any right to my private affairs."

"Then you shouldn't take advantage of his efforts, as you do when you read about your friends."

"Oh, that's too fine-spun for me. Now, I'll tell you; just because I take a drink at a bar I don't make a pal of the bartender. It comes to about the same thing, I fancy. You're trying to justify your profession.

Let me ask _you_; do you feel that you're within your decent rights when you come to a stranger with such a question as you put up to me?"

"No; I don't," replied Banneker ruefully. "I feel like a man trying to hold up a bigger man with a toy pistol."

"Then you'd better get into some other line."

But whatever hopes Banneker may have had of the magazine line suffered a set-back when, a few days later, he called upon the Great Gaines at his office, and was greeted with a cheery though quizzical smile.

"Yes; I've read it," said the editor at once, not waiting for the question. "It's clever. It's amazingly clever."

"I'm glad you like it," replied Banneker, pleased but not surprised.

Mr. Gaines's expression became one of limpid innocence. "Like it? Did I say I liked it?"

"No; you didn't say so."

"No. As a matter of fact I don't like it. Dear me, no! Not at all. Where did you get the idea?" asked Mr. Gaines abruptly.

"The plot?"

"No; no. Not the plot. The plot is nothing. The idea of choosing such an environment and doing the story in that way."

"From The New Era Magazine."

"I begin to see. You have been studying the magazine."

"Yes. Since I first had the idea of trying to write for it."

"Flattered, indeed!" said Mr. Gaines dryly. "And you modeled yourself upon--what?"

"I wrote the type of story which the magazine runs to."

"Pardon me. You did not. You wrote, if you will forgive me, an imitation of that type. Your story has everything that we strive for except reality."

"You believe that I have deliberately copied--"

"A type, not a story. No; you are not a plagiarist, Mr. Banneker. But you are very thoroughly a journalist."

"Coming from you that can hardly be accounted a compliment."

"Nor is it so intended. But I don't wish you to misconstrue me. You are not a journalist in your style and method; it goes deeper than that. You are a journalist in your--well, in your approach. 'What the public wants.'"

Inwardly Banneker was raging. The incisive perception stung. But he spoke lightly. "Doesn't The New Era want what its public wants?"

"My dear sir, in the words of a man who ought to have been an editor of to-day, 'The public be damned!' What I looked to you for was not your idea of what somebody else wanted you to write, but your expression of what you yourself want to write. About hoboes. About railroad wrecks.

About cowmen or peddlers or waterside toughs or stage-door Johnnies, or ward politicians, or school-teachers, or life. Not pink teas."

"I have read pink-tea stories in your magazine."

"Of course you have. Written by people who could see through the pink to the primary colors underneath. When _you_ go to a pink tea, you are pink. Did you ever go to one?"

Still thoroughly angry, Banneker nevertheless laughed, "Then the story is no use?"

"Not to us, certainly. Miss Thornborough almost wept over it. She said that you would undoubtedly sell it to The Bon Vivant and be damned forever."

"Thank her on my behalf," returned the other gravely. "If The Bon Vivant wants it and will pay for it, I shall certainly sell it to them."

"Out of pique?... Hold hard, young sir! You can't shoot an editor in his sanctum because of an ill-advised but natural question."

"True enough. Nor do I want--well, yes; I would rather like to."

"Good! That's natural and genuine."

"What do you think The Bon Vivant would pay for that story?" inquired Banneker.

"Perhaps a hundred dollars. Cheap, for a career, isn't it!"