“But what’s the use?” she asked of herself wearily and resignedly after a time. “Why should I cry? Why shouldn’t I marry Barton? I don’t amount to anything, anyhow. Arthur wouldn’t have me. I wanted him, and I am compelled to take some one else--or no one--what difference does it really make who? My dreams are too high, that’s all. I wanted Arthur, and he wouldn’t have me. I don’t want Barton, and he crawls at my feet. I’m a failure, that’s what’s the matter with me.” And then, turning up her sleeves and removing a fichu which stood out too prominently from her breast, she went into the kitchen and, looking about for an apron, observed: “Can’t I help? Where’s the tablecloth?” and finding it among napkins and silverware in a drawer in the adjoining room, proceeded to set the table. A STORY OF STORIES Take a smoky Western city. Call it Omaha or Kansas City or Denver, only let the Mississippi flow past it. Put in it two rival morning papers--two, and only two--the _Star_ and the _News_, the staffs of which are rather keen to outwit each other. On the staff of the _News_, slightly the better of the two newspapers, put Mr. David Kolinsky, alias (yes, alias) David, or “Red” Collins (a little shift of nomenclature due to the facts that, first: he was a South Russian Jew who looked exactly like a red-headed Irishman--that is a peculiarity of South Russian Jews, I believe--and secondly: that it was more _distingué_, as it were, to be Irish in Omaha or Denver or Kansas City than it was to be a South Russian Jew). Give him a slithery, self-confident, race-track or tout manner. Put on him “loud” or showy clothes, a diamond ring, a ruby pin in his tie, a yellowish-green Fedora hat, yellow shoes, freckles, a sneering contemptuous “tough” smile, and you have Mr. “Red” Collins as Mr.---- But wait. On the _Star_, slightly the lesser of these two great dailies that matutinally thrashed the city to a foam of interest, place Mr. Augustus Binns, no less, young (not over twenty-two), tall, college-y, rather graceful as young college men go, literary of course, highly ambitious, with gold eye-glasses, a wrist watch, a cane--in short, one of those ambitious young gentlemen of this rather un-happy go un-lucky scribbling world who has distinct ideals, to say nothing of dreams, as to what the newspaper and literary professions combined should bring him, and who, in addition, inherently despised all creatures of the “Red” Collins, or race-track, gambler, amateur detective, police and political, type. Well may you ask, what was Mr. Collins, with his peculiar characteristics, doing on a paper of the importance and distinction of the _News_. A long story, my dears. Newspapers are peculiar institutions.