The Patriot, for itself."

"Oh, don't I!"

"If you do, it's only because it's part of you; your voice; your power.
Because it belongs to you. I wonder if you love me mostly for the same
reason."

"Say, the reverse reason. Because I belong so entirely to you that
nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you. Can't
you realize and believe?"

"No; I shouldn't be jealous of the paper," she mused, ignoring his
appeal. Then, with a sudden transition: "I like your Russell Edmonds. Am
I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?"

"Of mind and soul. You would be the one to see it.

'.............the nobleness that lies
Sleeping but never dead in other men,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own'"--

he quoted, smiling into her eyes.

"Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?"

"Often. He's my main and only reliance, politically."

"Only politically? Does he ever comment on other editorials? The one on
Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?"

Banneker was faintly surprised. "No. Why should he? Did you discuss that
with him?"

"Indeed not! I wouldn't discuss that particular editorial with any one
but you."

He moved uneasily. "Aren't you attaching undue importance to a very
trivial subject? You know that was half a joke, anyway."

"Was it?" she murmured. "Probably I take it too seriously. But--but
Harvey Wheelwright came into one of our early talks, almost our first
about real things. When I began to discover you; when 'The Voices' first
sang to us. And he wasn't one of the Voices, exactly, was he?"

"He? He's a bray! But neither was Sears-Roebuck one of the Voices. Yet
you liked my editorial on that."

"I adored it! You believed what you were writing. So you made it
beautiful."

"Nothing could make Harvey Wheelwright beautiful. But, at least, you'll
admit I made him--well, appetizing." His face took on a shade. "Love's
labor lost, too," he added. "We never did run the Wheelwright serial,
you know."

"Why?"

"Because the infernal idiot had to go and divorce a perfectly
respectable, if plain and middle-aged wife, in order to marry a quite
scandalous Chicago society flapper."

"What connection has that with the serial?"

"Don't you see? Wheelwright is the arch-deacon of the eternal
proprieties and pieties. Purity of morals. Hearth and home. Faithful
unto death, and so on. Under that sign he conquers--a million pious and
snuffy readers, per book. Well, when he gets himself