. If he'd just walk over with her to a
Clark Street car ... And she thanked him for everything, including the
supper. But all the time he could see her trying, with a perplexity
almost pathetic, to discover what she had done to change his manner
again like that.

He was thoroughly contrite about it, and he did his best to recover an
appearance of friendly good will. He didn't demur to her wish to be put
on a car, and at the crossing where they waited for it, after an almost
silent walk, he did manage to shake hands and wish her luck and tell her
she'd hear from him soon, in a way that he felt reassured her.

But he kicked his way to the curb after the car had carried her off, and
marched to his hotel in a sort of baffled fury. He didn't know exactly
what had gone wrong about the evening. He couldn't, in phrases, tell
himself just what it was he'd wanted. But he did know, with a perfectly
abysmal conviction, that he was a fool!

CHAPTER X

THE VOICE OF THE WORLD

If you were to accost the average layman, especially the layman who has,
at one time or another, found his personal affairs, or those of his
friends, casually illuminated by the straying search-light of newspaper
notoriety, and put this hypothetical question to him: What chance would
there be that a young married woman, who, in a social sense, really
"belonged," could leave her husband for a musical-comedy chorus in the
city he lived in, and escape having the fact chronicled in the daily
press?--that layman would tell you that there was simply no chance at
all. But if you were to put the same question to a person expert in the
science of publicity--to an alumnus of the local room of any big city
daily, you'd get a very different answer. Because your expert knows how
many good stories there are that never get into the papers. He allows
for the element of luck; he knows how vitally important it is that the
right person should become aware of the fact at exactly the right time,
in order that a simple happening may be converted into news.

Rose's "escapade"--that's how it would have been described--didn't get
into the papers. Jimmy Wallace, of course, before the bar of his own
conscience, stood convicted of high treason. There was no use arguing
with himself that he was hired as a critic and not as a reporter. For,
just as it is the doctor's duty to prolong, if possible, the life of his
patient, or the lawyer's duty to defend his client, so it is the d