anker or a railroad president was sacrosanct. His words
were received with awe. Wall Street was the holy of holies, not to be
profaned by the slightest hint of impiety. Well, we've changed all that!
Not I, alone. Our cartoons have done more than the editorials. Every
other paper in town has had to follow our lead. Even The Ledger."

"I like The Ledger," declared Io.

"Why?"

"I don't know. It has a sort of dignity; the dignity of self-respect."

"Hasn't The Patriot?" demanded the jealous Banneker.

"Not a bit," she answered frankly, "except for your editorials. They
have the dignity of good workmanship, and honesty, and courage, even
when you're wrong."

"Are we so often wrong, Io?" he said wistfully.

"Dear boy, you can't expect a girl, brought up as I have been, to
believe that society is upside down, and would be better if it were
tipped over the other way and run by a lot of hod-carriers and
ditch-diggers and cooks. Can you, now?"

"Of course not. Nor is that what I advocate. I'm for the under dog. For
fair play. So are you, aren't you? I saw your name on the Committee List
of the Consumers' League, dealing with conditions in the department
stores."

"That's different," she said. "Those girls haven't a chance in some of
the shops. They're brutalized. The stores don't even pretend to obey the
laws. We are trying to work out some sort of organization, now, for
them."

"Yet you're hostile to organized labor! Who shall ever understand the
feminine mind! Some day you'll be coming to us for help."

"Very likely. It must be a curious sensation, Ban, to have the
consciousness of the power that you wield, and to be responsible to
nobody on earth."

"To the public that reads us," he corrected.

"Not a real responsibility. There is no authority over you; no appeal
from your judgments. Hasn't that something to do with people's dislike
and distrust of the newspapers; the sense that so much irresponsible
power is wrong?"

"Yet," he said, "any kind of censorship is worse than the evil it
remedies. I've never shown you my creed, have I?"

His manner was half jocular; there was a smile on his lips, but his eyes
seemed to look beyond the petty troubles and problems of his craft to a
final and firm verity.

"Tell me," she bade him.

He drew his watch out and opened the back. For a moment she thought,
with confused emotions, that she would see there a picture of herself of
which he might have possessed himself so