bonnet and jacket
with gestures of an almost apologetic modesty. He seemed to ignore her,
so that she was able to glance surreptitiously at his face. He was now
apparently less worried. Still, it was an enigmatic face. She had no
notion of what he had been doing since his hurried exit in the
afternoon. He might have been attending to his legal practice, or he
might have been abroad on mysterious errands.

"Funny business, this newspaper business is, isn't it?" he remarked,
after a moment. "Just imagine Enville, now! Upon my soul I didn't think
he had it in him!... Of course,"--he threw his head up with a careless
laugh,--"of course, it would have been madness for us to miss such a
chance! He's one of the men of the future, in this town."

"Yes," she agreed, in an eager whisper.

In an instant George Cannon had completely changed the attitude of her
conscience,--by less than a phrase, by a mere intonation. In an instant
he had reassured her into perfect security. It was plain, from every
accent of his voice, that he had done nothing of which he thought he
ought to be ashamed. Business was business, and newspapers were
newspapers; and the simple truth was that her absurd conscience had been
in the wrong. Her duty was to accept the standards of her new world. Who
was she? Nobody! She did accept the standards of her new world, with
fervour. She was proud of them, actually proud of their apparent
wickedness. She had accomplished an act of faith. Her joy became
intense, and shot glinting from her eyes as she put on her gloves. Her
life became grand to her. She knew she was known in the town as 'the
girl who could write shorthand.' Her situation was not ordinary; it was
unique. Again, the irregularity of the hours, and the fact that the work
never commenced till the afternoon, seemed to her romantic and
beautiful. Here she was, at nine o'clock, alone with George Cannon on
the second floor of the house! And who, gazing from the Square at the
lighted window, would guess that she and he were there alone?

All the activities of newspaper production were poetized by her fervour.
The _Chronicle_ was not a poor little weekly sheet, struggling into
existence anyhow, at haphazard, dependent on other newspapers for all
except purely local items of news. It was an organ! It was the
courageous rival of the ineffable _Signal_, its natural enemy! One day
it would trample on the _Signal_! And though her role was humble, though
she under