of the lowest popular taste. They
summoned their best novelists to throw themselves recklessly upon the
English language, and extort from it its highest expression in color and
lyrical beauty, the novelists whose mission it is, in the newspaper
campaign against realism, to adorn and dramatize the commonest events of
life, creating in place of the old-fashioned "news" the highly spiced
"story," which is the ideal aspiration of the reporter.

Whatever may be said about the power of the press, it is undeniable
that it can set the entire public thinking and talking about any topic,
however insignificant in itself, that it may elect to make the
sensation of the day--a wedding, a murder, a political scandal, a
divorce, a social event, a defalcation, a lost child, an unidentified
victim of accident or crime, an election, or--that undefined quickener of
patriotism called a casus belli. It can impose any topic it pleases upon
the public mind. In case there is no topic, it is necessary to make one,
for it is an indefeasible right of the public to have news.

These reports of the Mavick ball had a peculiar interest for at least two
people in New York. Murad Ault read them with a sardonic smile and an
enjoyment that would not have been called altruistic. Philip
searched them with the feverish eagerness of a maiden who scans the
report of a battle in which her lover has been engaged.

All summer long he had lived upon stray bits of news in the society
columns of the newspapers. To see Evelyn's name mentioned, and only
rarely, as a guest at some entertainment, and often in connection with
that of Lord Montague, did not convey much information, nor was that
little encouraging. Was she well? Was she absorbed in the life of the
season? Did she think of him in surroundings so brilliant? Was she,
perhaps, unhappy and persecuted? No tidings came that could tell him the
things that he ached to know.

Only recently intelligence had come to him that at the same time wrung
his heart with pity and buoyed him up with hope. He had not seen Miss
McDonald since her dismissal, for she had been only one night in the
city, but she had written to him. Relieved by her discharge of all
obligations of silence, she had written him frankly about the whole
affair, and, indeed, put him in possession of unrecorded details and
indications that filled him with anxiety, to be sure, but raised his
courage and strengthened his determination. If Evelyn loved him