"Well--does he _want_ to lose his money?--What I mean is, that we aren't paying our way--we've scarcely any advertisements, you see----" "I think that what you mean is that we ought to become Liberals?" There was a little ring in Amory's voice. Mr. Strong made no reply. "Or Fabians, perhaps?" Still Mr. Strong did not answer. "Because if you _do_ mean that, I can only say I'm--disappointed in you!" Now those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew how exceedingly sensitive he was to those very words--"I'm disappointed in you." In his large and varied experience they were invariably the prelude to the sack. And he very distinctly did not want the sack--not, at any rate, until he had got something better. Perhaps he reasoned within himself that, of himself and Prang, he would be the more discreet editor, and so lifted the question a whole plane morally higher. Perhaps, if it came to the next worst, he was prepared to accept the foisting of Prang upon him and to take his chance. Anyway, his face grew very serious, and he reached for the footstool, drew it close up to Amory's couch, and sat down on it. "I wonder," he said slowly, looking earnestly at his folded hands, "whether you'll put the worst interpretation on what I'm going to say." Amory waited. She dropped the satiny-white upper arm. Mr. Strong resumed, more slowly still-- "It's this. We're risking things. Cosimo's risking his money, but he may be risking more than that. And if he risks it, so do I." Into Amory's pretty face had come the look of the woman who prefers men to take risks rather than to talk about them.--"What do you risk?" she asked in tones that once more chilled Mr. Strong. "Well, for one thing, a prosecution. Prang's rather a whole-hogger. It's what I said before--we want to use him, not have him use us." "Oh?" said Amory with a faint smile. "And can't you manage Mr. Prang?" There was no doubt at all in Mr. Strong's mind what that meant. "Because if you can't," it plainly meant, "I dare say we can find somebody who can." Without any qualification whatever, she really was beginning to be a little disappointed in him. She wondered how Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba would have felt (had such a thing been conceivable) if, when that carpet had been carried by the Nubians into her lover's presence and unrolled, Antony or whatever his name was had blushed and turned away, too faint-hearted to take the gift the gods offered him? Risks! Weren't--Indian policies--worth a little risk?... Besides, no doubt Cosimo was still with Britomart Belchamber.... She put her hands behind her head again and gave a little laugh. Well, (as Edgar Strong himself might have put it in the days when his conversation had been slangier than it was now), it was up to him to make good pretty quickly or else to say good-bye to the editorship of a rag that at least did one bit of good in the world--paid Edgar Strong six pounds a week. And if it must be done it must, that was all. Damn it!...