it was. Do you feel that
the appearance in the paper of an article with which you don't agree
makes it necessary for you, in honor, to resign?"

"No, certainly not--"

"Is it that you don't like my turning down one of your articles and
printing one of my own instead? I didn't know you objected to that, old
fellow. You see--while your judgment is probably a hanged sight better
than mine, after all I am the man who is held responsible, and I am paid
a salary to see that my opinions become the opinions of the _Post_."

"It is entirely right that your opinions--"

"Then wherein have I offended? Be frank with me, like a good fellow, I
beg you!"

Queed eyed him strangely. Was the editor's inner vision really so
curiously astigmatic?

"I look at it this way," he said, in a slow, controlled voice. "The
_Post_ has said again and again that _this_ legislature must establish a
reformatory. That was the burden of a long series of editorials, running
back over a year, which, as I thought, had your entire approval. Now, at
the critical moment, when it was only necessary to say once more what
had been said a hundred times before, the _Post_ suddenly turns about
and, in effect, authorizes this legislature not to establish the
reformatory. The House killed the bill just now. Bangor quoted from the
_Post_ editorial. There can be no doubt, of course, that it turned a
number of votes--enough to have safely carried the bill."

West looked disturbed and unhappy.

"But if we find out that this legislature is so drained by inescapable
expenses that it simply cannot provide the I money? Suppose the State
had been swept by a plague? Suppose there was a war and a million of
unexpected expenses had suddenly dropped on us from the clouds? Wouldn't
you agree that circumstances altered cases, and that, under such
circumstances, everything that was not indispensable to the State's
existence would have to go over?"

Queed felt like answering West's pepper-fire of casuistry by throwing
Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his determination to avoid a
"scene," he felt his bottled-up indignation rising. A light showed in
his stone-gray eyes.

"Can't you really see that these circumstances are not in the least like
those? Did you do me the courtesy to read what I wrote about this
so-called 'economy argument' last night?"

"Certainly," said West, surprised by the other's tone. "But clever as it
was, it was not based, in my opinion, on a clear