you see how you could make out that it meant something else, or
was just ironical?" He went on to prove how the text might be given the
complexion he wished, and Burnamy saw that he had really thought it not
impossibly out. "I can't put it in writing as well as you; but I've done
all the work, and all you've got to do is to give it some of them
turns of yours. I'll cable the fellows in our office to say I've been
misrepresented, and that my correction is coming. We'll get it into
shape here together, and then I'll cable that. I don't care for the
money. And I'll get our counting-room to see this scoundrel"--he picked
up the paper that had had fun with him--"and fix him all right, so that
he'll ask for a suspension of public opinion, and--You see, don't you?"

The thing did appeal to Burnamy. If it could be done, it would enable
him to make Stoller the reparation he longed to make him more than
anything else in the world. But he heard himself saying, very gently,
almost tenderly, "It might be done, Mr. Stoller. But I couldn't do it.
It wouldn't be honest--for me."

"Yah!" yelled Stoller, and he crushed the paper into a wad and flung it
into Burnamy's face. "Honest, you damn humbug! You let me in for this,
when you knew I didn't mean it, and now you won't help me out because it
a'n't honest! Get out of my room, and get out quick before I--"

He hurled himself toward Burnamy, who straightened himself, with "If you
dare!" He knew that he was right in refusing; but he knew that Stoller
was right, too, and that he had not meant the logic of what he had
said in his letter, and of what Burnamy had let him imply. He braved
Stoller's onset, and he left his presence untouched, but feeling as
little a moral hero as he well could.

XXXVIII.

General Triscoe woke in the bad humor of an elderly man after a day's
pleasure, and in the self-reproach of a pessimist who has lost his point
of view for a time, and has to work back to it. He began at the belated
breakfast with his daughter when she said, after kissing him gayly, in
the small two-seated bower where they breakfasted at their hotel when
they did not go to the Posthof, "Didn't you have a nice time, yesterday,
papa?"

She sank into the chair opposite, and beamed at him across the little
iron table, as she lifted the pot to pour out his coffee.

"What do you call a nice time?" he temporized, not quite able to resist
her gayety.

"Well, the kind of time I had."

"Di