He looked yearningly at the photograph. Wonderful how that tiny oblong of paper, touched with a few flat tints could so evoke the very essence and fragrance and challenging sweetness of her! She looked out at him, all soft radiance in the hard radiance of the sunlight which flooded her, and his fingers, bidden to tear the likeness to fragments and scatter it--not in resentment but as a sacrificial formality--trembled and slackened. What harm, after all, in keeping the picture? It meant nothing--and therein Jeremy Robson lied to his own soul. It meant that he still clung to his vision, which nothing had blurred. For no other woman had so much as impinged upon the outskirts of his imagination. There was neither time nor space for women other than Marcia. He restored the picture, the note, the prim numerals of the golf scores--how vividly he could see the full, lithe swing of the young body vivid with untainted health and vitality as her brassie flicked the ball cleanly from its turfy lie!--and locked the drawer again. There lay hopes dead and ideals still unconquerably alive. ***** Reading the Laurens interview, conspicuously played up, on its merits as news, Martin Embree felt rise within him dark misgivings as to his supporter. He was of that type which, in its self-centered mind, forbodes disloyalty and suspects betrayal in any divergence of opinion or policy from its own standards. But his smile was as brilliant as usual, perhaps even more so, when he next met Jeremy. “Pretty handsome send-off you gave Laurens.” “Yes. I like him. He’s straight.” “So’s a snake--when it’s dead. I told you to look out for him.” “I did,” said the editor good-humoredly. “I don’t think he fooled me any. Or even tried to.” “He’s likely to be the man we’ve got to fight for the governorship.” “We’ll fight him, when the time comes.” “And meantime you boost him.” “You’ll never understand the newspaper game, Martin. That was news; therefore worth printing.” “I understand this, my boy; that you can’t afford to mix up with Laurens and his gang.” “Oh, cheer up, Martin! I don’t intend to. But I can’t take your point of view in everything, much as I appreciate what you’ve done for the paper.” Indeed, Jeremy had always given ungrudging acknowledgment of Embree’s services to The Guardian. That first boost in circulation through Embree’s efforts in the Northern Tier had been invaluable. And now, through his strength in local labor circles, Embree was being of assistance to Jeremy, in preventing strikes, and allaying trouble in the press-room. The center of disturbance there was the white-haired, sharp-tongued Socialist, Nick Milliken.