"Tell me about him. I should be glad to know. I might----"

"There's so little to tell--it was principally charm. He was one of
the most unostentatious, unselfish, high-minded, consistent men I ever
knew. Completely a gentleman in the finest sense of that overworked
word."

"That's very interesting. I should be glad----"

Dryden shook his head. "You didn't know him well enough. It was like
the delicacy of the rose--finger it and it falls to pieces. No offence
to you, of course. I doubt my own ability to do him justice, well as I
knew him. But you put a stopper on that--and you were right. My kind
regards," he said, draining his second glass of claret. "The laborer
is worthy of his hire, the artist must not be interfered with. It was
an impertinence of me to ask to do your work."

Harrington's eyes gleamed. "It's pleasant to be appreciated--to have
one's point of view comprehended. It isn't pleasant to butt in where
you're not wanted, but there's something bigger than that involved,
the----"

"Quite so; it was a cruel bribe; and many men in your shoes would not
have been proof against it."

"And you were in dead earnest, too, though for a moment I couldn't
believe it. But the point is--and that's what I mean--that the
public--gentlemen like you and ladies like the handsome one who looked
daggers at me this morning--don't realize that the world is bound to
have the news on its breakfast-table and supper-table, and that when a