"Oh, she's a highly moral murderess. Killed her lover in defense of her honor, you know. Which means that she shot him when he got tired of her.

A sobbing jury promptly acquitted her, and now she's writing 'Warnings to Young Girls.' They're most improving and affecting, I assure you. We look after that."

"Ban! I hate to have you so cynical."

"Not at all," he protested. "Ask the Prevention of Vice people and the criminologists. They'll tell you that Evadne's column is a real influence for good among the people who read and believe it."

"What class is Reformed Rennigan's sermon aimed at?" she inquired, with wrinkling nostrils. "'Soaking it to Satan'; is that another regular feature?"

"Twice a week. It gives us a Y.M.C.A. circulation that is worth a good deal to us. Outside of my double column, the page is a sort of forum.

I'll take anything that is interesting or authoritative. For example, if Royce Melvin had something of value to say to the public about music, where else could she find so wide a hearing as through The Patriot?"

"No, I thank you," returned his visitor dryly.

"No? Are you sure? What is your opinion of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' as a national song?"

"It's dreadful."

"Why?"

"For every reason. The music misfits the words. It's beyond the range of most voices. The harmonies are thin. No crowd in the world can sing it.

What is the value or inspiration of a national song that the people can't sing?"

"Ask it of The Patriot's public. I'll follow it up editorially; 'Wanted; A Song for America.'"

"I will," she answered impulsively. Then she laughed. "Is that the way you get your contributors?"

"Often, as the spider said to the fly," grinned Banneker the shameless.

"Take a thousand words or more and let us have your picture."

"No. Not that. I've seen my friends' pictures too often in your society columns. By the way, how comes it that a paper devoted to the interests of the common people maintains that aristocratic feature?"

"Oh, the common people eat it alive. Russell Edmonds is largely responsible for keeping it up. You should hear his theory. It's ingenious. I'll send for him."

Edmonds, who chanced to be at his desk, entered the editorial den with his tiny pipe between his teeth, and, much disconcerted at finding a lady there, hastily removed it until Miss Van Arsdale suggested its restitution.

"What? The society page?" said he. "Yes; I was against dropping it. You see, Miss Van Arsdale, I'm a Socialist in belief."

"Is there a pun concealed in that or are you serious, Mr. Edmonds?"

"Serious. I'm always that on the subjects of Socialism and The Patriot."

"Then you must explain if I'm to understand."

"By whom is society news read? By two classes," expounded the veteran; "those whose names appear, and those who are envious of those whose names appear. Well, we're after the envious."

"Still I don't see. With what purpose?'

"Jim Simpson, who has just got his grocery bill for more than he can pay, reads a high-colored account of Mrs. Stumpley-Triggs's aquatic dinner served in the hundred-thousand-dollar swimming-pool on her Westchester estate. That makes Jim think."

"You mean that it makes him discontented."

"Well, discontent is a mighty leaven."

Miss Van Arsdale directed her fine and serious eyes upon Banneker. "So it comes back to the cult of discontent. Is that Mr. Marrineal's formula, too, Mr. Edmonds?"

"Underneath all his appearance of candor, Marrineal's a secret animal,"

said Edmonds.

"Does he leave you a free hand with your editorials, Ban?" inquired the outsider.

"Absolutely."

"Watches the circulation only," said Edmonds. "Thus far," he added.

"You're looking for an ulterior motive, then," interpreted Miss Van Arsdale.

"I'm looking for whatever I can find in Marrineal, Miss Van Arsdale,"

confessed the patriarch of the office. "As yet I haven't found much."

"I have," said Banneker. "I've discovered his theory of journalism. We three, Edmonds, Marrineal, and I, regard this business from three diverse viewpoints. To Edmonds it's a vocation and a rostrum. He wants really, under his guise as the most far-seeing news man of his time, to call sinners against society to repentance, or to force repentance down their throats. There's a good deal of the stern evangelist about you, you know, Pop."

"And you?" The other's smile seemed enmeshed in the dainty spiral of smoke brooding above his pursed lips.

"Oh, I'm more the pedagogue. With me, too, the game is a vocation. But it's a different one. I'd like to marshal men's minds as a generalissimo marshals armies."

"In the bonds of your own discipline?" asked Miss Van Arsdale.

"If I could chain a mind I'd be the most splendid tyrant of history. No.

Free leadership of the free is good enough."

"If Marrineal will leave you free," commented the veteran. "What's your diagnosis of Marrineal, then?"

"A priest of Baal."

"With The Patriot in the part of Baal?"

"Not precisely The Patriot. Publicity, rather, of which The Patriot is merely the instrument. Marrineal's theory of publicity is interesting.

It may even be true. Substantially it is this: All civilized Americans fear and love print; that is to say, Publicity, for which read Baal.

They fear it for what it may do to them. They love and fawn on it for what it may do for them. It confers the boon of glory and launches the bolts of shame. Its favorites, made and anointed from day to day, are the blessed of their time. Those doomed by it are the outcasts. It sits in momentary judgment, and appeal from its decisions is too late to avail anything to its victims. A species of auto-juggernaut, with Marrineal at the wheel."

"What rubbish!" said Miss Van Arsdale with amused scorn.

"Oh, because you've nothing to ask or fear from Baal. Yet even you would use it, for your musical preachment."

As he spoke, he became aware of Edmonds staring moodily and with pinched lips at Miss Van Arsdale. To the mind's eye of the old stager had flashed a sudden and astounding vision of all that pride of womanhood and purity underlying the beauty of the face, overlaid and fouled by the inky vomit of Baal of the printing-press, as would have come to pass had not he, Edmonds, obstructed the vengeance.

"I can imagine nothing printed," said the woman who had loved Willis Enderby, "that could in any manner influence my life."