nwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought,
he had let it lead him to certainty. "It will have moved Mr. Bender to
absolute rapture."

"Rather," Lady Grace wondered, "than have put him off?"

"It will have put him prodigiously _on!_ Mr. Bender--as he said to me
at Dedborough of his noble host there," Hugh pursued--"is 'a very nice
man'; but he's a product of the world of advertisment, and advertisement
is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish
in water."

She took it from him as half doubting. "But mayn't advertisement, in so
special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?"

Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught
from foreign comrades. "He rides the biggest whirlwind--he has got it
saddled and bitted."

She faced the image, but cast about "Then where does our success come
in?"

"In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him."
And Hugh further pointed the moral. "If in such proceedings all he
knows is publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it's only a
question of giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself,
you see, he'll have too much for every one else--so that we shall 'up'
in a body and slay him."

The girl's eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. "But if
he has meanwhile got the picture?"

"We'll slay him before he gets it!" He revelled in the breadth of his
view. "Our own policy must be to _organise_ to that end the inevitable
outcry. Organise Bender himself--organise him to scandal." Hugh had
already even pity to spare for their victim. "He won't know it from a
boom."

Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. "But that
will be only if he wants and decides for the picture."

"We must make him then want and decide for it--decide, that is, for
'ours.' To save it we must work him up--he'll in that case want it so
indecently much. Then _we_ shall have to want it more!"

"Well," she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, "you can take a
horse to water----!"

"Oh, trust me to make him drink!"

There appeared a note in this that convinced her. "It's you, Mr.
Crimble, who are 'splendid'!"

"Well, I shall be--with my jolly wire!" And all on that scent again,
"May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick's news?" he asked.

"Why, rather, of course, come back!"

"Only not," he debated, "till your father has left."

Lady Grace consi