ched the subject of Milly's death, he
was met with a stony avoidance which inspired both astonishment and
resentment. Sub-normal as he now was in nervous strength and tension, he
shrank from having it out with Ellis. But he felt, for the first time in
his life, forlorn and friendless.

On his part McGuire Ellis brooded over a deep anger. He was not a man to
yield lightly of his best; but he had given to Hal, first a fine
loyalty, and later, as they grew into closer association, a warm if
rather reticent affection. For the rough idealist had found in his
employer an idealism not always as clear and intelligent as his own, yet
often higher and finer; and along with the professional protectiveness
which he had assumed over the younger man's inexperience had come an
honest admiration and far-reaching hopes. Now he saw in his chief one
who had betrayed his cause through a weak and selfish indulgence. The
clear-sighted journalist knew that the newspaper owner with a shameful
secret binds his own power in the coils of that secret. And fatally in
error as he was as to the nature of the entanglement in which Hal was
involved, he foresaw the inevitable effect of the situation upon the
"Clarion." Moreover, he was bitterly disappointed in Hal as a man. Had
his superior "gone on the loose" and contracted a _liaison_ with some
woman of the outer world, Ellis would have passed over the abstract
morality of the question. But to take advantage of a girl in his own
employ, and then so cruelly to leave her to her fate,--there was rot at
the heart of the man who could do that. The excision of the offending
"Relief Pills" ad. after the culmination of the tragedy, was simply a
sop to hypocrisy.

Only once had Ellis made any reference to Milly's death. On the day of
her funeral Max Veltman had disappeared, without notice. A week later he
reported for duty, shaken and pallid.

"Do you want to take him back?" Ellis inquired of Hal.

Hal's first impulse was to say "No"; but he conquered it, remembering
Milly Neal's pitiful generosity toward her lover.

"Where has he been?" he asked.

"Drunk, I guess."

"What do you think?"

"I think yes."

"All right, if he's sobered up. Tell him it mustn't happen again."

There was a gleam in McGuire Ellis's eye. "Suppose _you_ tell him that
it mustn't happen again. It would come with more force from you."

Hal whirled in his chair. "Mac, what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I was just thinkin