otent a month ago. It was all a
story of cajolery or intimidation from the formidable opposition, and of
mean yielding in the places of responsibility. And--yes--She felt it as
bad for one of her two friends to be so stained as another. It had come
to that. At last she must admit that they stood upon level ground in her
imagination, the nameless little Doctor of two years back side by side
with the beau ideal of all her girlhood. One's honor was as dear to her
as another's; one's friendship as sweet; and now one of them was her
friend no more.

And it was not West whom she must cast out. There was no peg anywhere to
hang even the smallest suspicion of him upon. She scourged her mind for
seeking one. It was Queed who, at the pinch, had broken down and
betrayed them with a kiss: Queed, of the obscure parentage, dubious
inheritance, and omitted upbringing; Queed, whom she had first stood
upon his feet and started forward in a world of men, had helped and
counseled and guided, had admitted to her acquaintance, her
friendship--for this.

But because Sharlee had known Queed well as a man who loved truth,
because the very thing that she had seen and most admired in him from
the beginning was an unflinching honesty of intellect and character,
because of the remembrance of his face as she had last seen it: a tiny
corner of her mind, in defiance of all reason, revolted against this
condemnation and refused to shut tight against him. All morning she sat
at her work, torn by anxiety, hoping every moment that her telephone
might ring with some unthought-of explanation, which would leave her
with nothing worse upon her mind than the dead reformatory. But though
the telephone rang often, it was never for this.

* * * * *

Sitting in a corner of the House gallery, about noon, Mr. Dayne saw the
reformatory bill, which he himself had written, called up out of order
and snowed under. The only speech was made by the Solon who had the bill
called up, a familiar organization wheelhorse, named Meachy T. Bangor,
who quoted with unconcealed triumph from the morning's _Post_, wholly
ignoring all the careful safeguards and tearing out of the context only
such portions as suited his humor and his need. Mr. Bangor pointed out
that, inasmuch as the "acknowledged organ" of the State Department of
Charities now at length "confessed" that the reformatory had better wait
two years, there were no longer two sides to the