t it for a week. Miss Weyland would
forgive West, of course, but he could never be the same to her again. He
would always have that spot. Queed himself felt that way about it. He
had admired West more than any man he ever knew, more even than Colonel
Cowles, but now he could never think very much of him again. He was
quite sure that Miss Weyland was like that, too. Thus the matter began
to grow very serious. For old Surface, who was always right about
people, had said that West was the man that Miss Weyland meant to marry.

Very gradually, for the young man was still a slow analyst where people
were concerned, an irresistible conclusion was forced upon him.

Miss Weyland would rather think that he had written the editorial than
to know that West had written it.

The thought, when he finally reached it, leapt up at him, but he pushed
it away. However, it returned. It became like one of those swinging logs
which hunters hang in trees to catch bears: the harder he pushed it
away, the harder it swung back at him.

He fully understood the persistence of this idea. It was the heart and
soul of the whole question. He himself was simply Miss Weyland's friend,
the least among many. If belief in his dishonesty had brought her
pain--and he had her word for that--it was a hurt that would quickly
pass. False friends are soon forgotten. But to West belonged the shining
pedestal in the innermost temple of her heart. It would go hard with the
little lady to find at the last moment this stain upon her lover's
honor.

He had only to sit still and say nothing to make her happy. That was
plain. So the whole issue was shifted. It was not, as it had first
seemed, merely a matter between West and himself. The real issue was
between Miss Weyland and himself--between her happiness and his ... no,
not his happiness--his self-respect, his sense of justice, his honor,
his chaste passion for Truth, his ... yes, his happiness.

Did he think most of Miss Weyland or of himself? That was what it all
came down to. Here was the new demand that his acknowledgment of a
personal life was making upon him, the supreme demand, it seemed, that
any man's personal life could ever make upon him. For if, on the day
when Nicolovius had suddenly revealed himself as Surface, he had been
asked to give himself bodily, he was now asked to give himself
spiritually--to give all that made him the man he was.

From the stark alternative, once raised, there was no esca