"A Dan'el, a Dan'el come to judgment! I knew you could help us out! Take
'em along, and tell us which will go the furthest with the 'ewig
Weibliche.' Dryfoos, I want a word with you." He led the way into the
front room, flirting an airy farewell to Beaton with his hand as he went.




VII.

March and Beaton remained alone together for a moment, and March said: "I
hope you will think it worth while to take hold with us, Mr. Beaton. Mr.
Fulkerson puts it in his own way, of course; but we really want to make a
nice thing of the magazine." He had that timidity of the elder in the
presence of the younger man which the younger, preoccupied with his own
timidity in the presence of the elder, cannot imagine. Besides, March was
aware of the gulf that divided him as a literary man from Beaton as an
artist, and he only ventured to feel his way toward sympathy with him.
"We want to make it good; we want to make it high. Fulkerson is right
about aiming to please the women, but of course he caricatures the way of
going about it."

For answer, Beaton flung out, "I can't go in for a thing I don't
understand the plan of."

March took it for granted that he had wounded some exposed sensibility,
of Beaton's. He continued still more deferentially: "Mr. Fulkerson's
notion--I must say the notion is his, evolved from his syndicate
experience--is that we shall do best in fiction to confine our selves to
short stories, and make each number complete in itself. He found that the