And when he nodded she had gone away without another word. Now, as he hurried through the crowded streets, he was conscious that it was no good indeed; and he was divided between the artist's regret and the friend's joy in the fact. But it made him tremble. Was his hand to forget its cunning? And then, suddenly, he heard a familiar voice, and there beside him, with his hand on his shoulder, stood the mayor. "Why, Neil, my boy, how are you?" he said, and he took Kittrell's hand as warmly as ever. For a moment Kittrell was relieved, and then his heart sank; for he had a quick realization that it was the coward within him that felt the relief, and the man the sickness. If Clayton had reproached him, or cut him, it would have made it easier; but Clayton did none of these things, and Kittrell was irresistibly drawn to the subject himself. "You heard of my--new job?" he asked. "Yes," said Clayton, "I heard." "Well--" Kittrell began. "I'm sorry," Clayton said. "So was I," Kittrell hastened to say. "But I felt it--well, a duty, some way--to Edith. You know--we--need the money." And he gave the cynical laugh that went with the argument. "What does _she_ think? Does she feel that way about it?" Kittrell laughed, not cynically now, but uneasily and with embarrassment, for Clayton's blue eyes were on him, those eyes that could look into men and understand them so. "Of course you know," Kittrell went on nervously, "there is nothing personal in this. We newspaper fellows simply do what we are told; we obey orders like soldiers, you know. With the policy of the paper we have nothing to do. Just like Dick Jennings, who was a red-hot free-trader and used to write free-trade editorials for the _Times_--he went over to the _Telegraph_, you remember, and writes all those protection arguments." The mayor did not seem to be interested in Dick Jennings, or in the ethics of his profession. "Of course, you know I'm for you, Mr. Clayton, just exactly as I've always been. I'm going to vote for you." This did not seem to interest the mayor, either. "And, maybe, you know--I thought, perhaps," he snatched at this bright new idea that had come to him just in the nick of time; "that I might help you by my cartoons in the _Telegraph_; that is, I might keep them from being as bad as they might--" "But that wouldn't be dealing fairly with your new employers, Neil," the mayor said. Kittrell was making more and more a mess of this whole miserable business, and he was basely glad when they reached the corner. "Well, good-by, my boy," said the mayor, as they parted. "Remember me to the little woman." Kittrell watched him as he went on down the avenue, swinging along in his free way, the broad felt hat he wore riding above all the other hats in the throng that filled the sidewalk; and Kittrell sighed in deep depression. When he turned in his cartoon, Benson scanned it a moment, cocked his head this side and that, puffed his briar pipe, and finally said: