for. By the God I
worship,' he cried, in sudden wrath, 'I would fight for the principle
against death itself, and for a woman like Madge I would die at a slow
fire.'

'But, Ralston,' Paul besought him--'Ralston, you don't understand. You
find animation there; but it is there my weakness lies. Do you think I
care for myself?'

'Of course I do,' said Ralston. 'If you hadn't cared for yourself you
would never have brought a child like Madge into such an evil as this.'

'That's true enough,' said Paul; 'that's truth itself.'

He laid his elbows on the table, and leaned his head disconsolately upon
his hands. His companion shook him by the shoulder in the rough amity
which men use with one another.

'Look here, Armstrong: willy-nilly, you're the champion of a great
cause, and you have the sweetest woman in the world to fight for. Don't
flaunt the flag insolently--in the present temper of the public that
will never do--but stand by it all the same. So far as you're concerned,
Armstrong, it's a selfish accident that turns you Squire of Dames; but
you're in the tourney now, and you've got to behave respectably.'

'If you mean by behaving respectably that I've got to hold by Madge, and
live all this down if I can, and do my best to flutter through life on a
broken wing, I am with you.'

'I mean that, and more than that,' said Ralston. 'Turn your next play on
this theme; turn your next book on it. Never mind the odium of seeming
to fight a selfish battle; you're past that now. Your story is that
the man mires his feet in the ordinary manner, that he makes a fool of
himself in the usual fashion; that the saving woman comes to him pure
and clean, and does her healthful, beautiful work for him at such a
cost as you know of. Whether her life is tragedy modified or tragedy
unalloyed rests with the story-teller; but you're there to champion that
innocence.'

'You recoiled from a little tube of manuscript once,' said Paul, 'as if
it had held a poisonous explosive. Do you remember? Ralston laughed and
nodded. 'If you're bolder now, I'll show you something.'

'I am bolder now,' said Ralston; and Paul, leaving him for a moment,
raced upstairs, and, having made a brief search in his study, returned
with a big sheaf of type-written matter in his hand.

'There is my case,' he said. 'Old Darco calls it madness to challenge
such a truth in such a fashion. Weldon will take the piece and play it.
He will produce it anonymously by pref