. Kittrell gathered up the few articles he had at the
office, gave Nolan his sketch, bade the boys good-by--bade them good-by
as if he were going on a long journey, never to see them more--and then
he went.

After he had made the break it did not seem so bad as he had
anticipated. At first things went on smoothly enough. The campaign had
not opened, and he was free to exercise his talents outside the
political field. He drew cartoons dealing with banal subjects, touching
with the gentle satire of his humorous pencil foibles which all the
world agreed about, and let vital questions alone. And he and Edith
enjoyed themselves: indulged oftener in things they loved; went more
frequently to the theater; appeared at recitals; dined now and then
downtown. They began to realize certain luxuries they had not known for
a long time--some he himself had never known, some that Edith had not
known since she left her father's home to become his bride. In more
subtle ways, too, Kittrell felt the change: there was a sense of larger
leisure; the future beamed with a broader and brighter light; he formed
plans, among which the old dream of going ere long to Paris for serious
study took its dignified place. And then there was the sensation his
change had created in the newspaper world; that the cartoons signed
"Kit," which formerly appeared in the _Post_, should now adorn the broad
page of the _Telegraph_ was a thing to talk about at the press club; the
fact of his large salary got abroad in that little world as well, and,
after the way of that world, managed to exaggerate itself, as most facts
did. He began to be sensible of attentions from men of prominence--small
things, mere nods in the street, perhaps, or smiles in the theater
foyer, but enough to show that they recognized him. What those children
of the people, those working-men and women who used to be his unknown
and admiring friends in the old days on the _Post_, thought of
him--whether they missed him, whether they deplored his change as an
apostasy or applauded it as a promotion--he did not know. He did not
like to think about it.

But March came, and the politicians began to bluster like the season.
Late one afternoon he was on his way to the office with a cartoon, the
first in which he had seriously to attack Clayton. Benson, the managing
editor of the _Telegraph_, had conceived it, and Kittrell had worked on
it that day in sickness of heart. Every line of this new presentati