you'd do: You'd go down on your knees to that man and say:
'Take me away! Take me away from them, and pity me, and be
sorry for me, and love me--and love me--and love me!"

"And why don't you?" cried Helen Page.

"Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita
Flagg. "Because I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying.
Haven't I the right to cry?"

At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a
moral coward, in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the
copy editor, was editing Sam's story' of the laying of the
corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar was tilted near his
left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to
fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in mid-
air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the
blue pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell
softly to the desk and the blue pencil remained inactive. As
he read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered ejaculations;
and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew louder
and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and,
swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the
office. "In the name of Mike!" he shouted. "What IS this?"

The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters,
frowned in impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs
from the top of a table, was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped
in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his clever, clean-cut
features the expression was far-away and beatific. He came