nd, for the first
moment, would possibly be somewhat piqued with him personally. He knew
that women were extremely unreasonable about these things; they looked
at affairs from the emotional point of view, from the point of view of
the loose, large "effect." But Sharlee Weyland was highly intelligent
and sensible, and he had not the smallest doubt of his ability to make
her understand what the unfortunate situation was. He could not tell her
everything--Plonny had cautioned secrecy about the real gravity of the
crisis--but he would tell her enough to show her how he had acted, with
keen regrets, from his sternest sense of public duty. It was a cruel
stroke of fate's that his must be the hand to bring disappointment to
the girl he loved, but after all, would she not be the first to say that
he must never put his regard for her preferences above the larger good
of City and State? He could not love her, dear, so well, loved he not
honor more.

He picked up Queed's article and glanced again at the astonishing words,
words which, invested with the _Post's_ enormous prestige, simply kicked
and cuffed the party to its ruin. A wave of resentment against his
assistant swept through the editor's mind. This was what came of
trusting anything to anybody else. If you wanted to be sure that things
were done right, do them yourself. Because he had allowed Queed a little
rope, that young man had industriously gathered in almost enough to
hang, not himself, for he was nothing, but the _Post_ and its editor.
However, there was no use crying over spilt milk. What was done was
done. Fortunately, the _Post's_ general position was sound; had not the
editor himself dictated it? If the expression of that position in cold
type had been gradually carried by a subordinate to a more and more
violent extreme, to an intemperance of utterance which closely
approached insanity, what was it the editor's duty to do? Obviously to
take charge himself and swing the position back to a safe and sane mean,
exactly where he had placed it to begin with. That was all that was
asked of him--to shift back the paper's position to where he had placed
it in the beginning, and by so doing to save the party from wreck. Could
a sensible man hesitate an instant? And in return....

West's gaze wandered out of the window, and far on into the beyond....
His friends were watching him, silently but fearfully. Who and what
these friends were his swift thought did not stay to a