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 Ender