“Remember that apology I was going to make on demand? Do I hear any demand? I guess the apology’s the other way around.” “I’ve made it. Not to you, though. I’m going on. Eli! Once more I’m sorry and I’m ashamed.” “Until next time,” added the irrepressible malice of the white-haired Socialist. Not trusting himself to reply, the reporter walked out. Within a few strides Milliken was at his side. “He’s bad hurt, the old boy,” he confided in a wholly altered and wholly sincere tone. “I’m sorry--” ‘“Oh, your story is only part of it. Clever! Vur-ree clever. But they’d have got his place on the Board anyway. They needed it.” “What can I do?” “Nothing. Unless,” added the other on reflection, “you could slip something pleasant about him over some time. That’d please him. He’s like a child, about print.” At home Jem took out the picture of Marcia Ames and studied it. Tiny though it was, it was instinct with her very poise and spiritual effluence. As so often with herself, he felt the something unsaid behind the serene self-possession of the face; the something vital for which he must grope. What was the message, the demand which the face was making upon him, which she was making upon him through this dear memento? Ranging back, he recalled in a flash that first impression of her in the meeting, while she was still so completely unknown that he had mistaken even the fundamental matter of sex; the impression of an untouched, untainted valorousness. Again he saw it, reflected from the tiny delicacy of the picture. Plain enough now what she demanded of him. It was courage. CHAPTER X THE Senate proceedings did not open until ten o’clock. Meantime Montrose Clark, President of the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation, and in some part godling of local affairs, had telephoned his commands to The Record that a representative be sent to his office that morning to take a statement for the paper. Jeremy, incautiously dropping in at the office early, got the job to do before going to the Capitol. He was admitted to an outer office by the hand-perfected private secretary, cross-questioned briefly, and passed in to the Presence. Mr. Montrose Clark was telephoning. He was revealed to Jeremy’s inquiring eye as a plump, glossy, red-faced little man with a fussily assured manner, an autocratic voice and a keen and greedy eye. Few indeed were the local pies of promise or flavor in which Mr. Clark did not have a pudgy and profit-taking finger; and his bearing suggested the man comfortably sure of taking care of himself. He snapped “G’-bye” into the telephone and turned to Jeremy. “You’re the rippawtah from The Record?”