It may be supposed that this and a few similar things did Dorothy no harm at all; and of course she lied grossly, at any rate by implication, when she introduced the name of Doubledays'. Not that Doubledays', too, were not straining every nerve. They and everybody else knew of the coming Inauguration that was already as completely planned as--say, "Hamlet" without the Prince. Perhaps Dorothy did actually say something to them; perhaps she gave Mr. Miller an account that she thought quite good enough for Mr. Miller; not all of us can take our truth nascent and unsullied from the Fountainhead of all Truth. Mr. Miller at any rate thought she might possibly be dickering with Doubledays', and that was the practical matter. An introduction to Lady Tasker at the Ritz was no good to him if Doubledays' also was going to be introduced to Lady Tasker at the Ritz, and these and other things were Dorothy's to give or to withhold.... You see how it was. You see how time-serving and unprincipled and altogether immoral it was. Amory would not have touched it with the end of a long pole. Had Stan written the "Life and Work of Miss Dorothy Lennard" he would probably have written the most deplorable record of our whole deplorable age. Apart from these things, however, there was the intrinsic beauty of the idea itself. That went straight to the heart of every woman, and of nearly every man also. And it touched every single being of the future, too. To Mr. Wellcome it peculiarly belonged, and Jellies and the Eugenist might have shaken hands upon it. Actuarially its basis was as sound as it could be. Dorothy went carefully into this. The cost for the whole week would be nothing to Hallowells', and its return would be incalculable. Without it, those shining palatial premises would be as a setting that begged, prayed, implored for its jewel. If Mr. Miller didn't take it, Doubledays'--might. You don't bargain for these things; you show them, and name your price. If you are robbed, it is your own fault before the fact; only the people are robbed who deserve to be robbed. Dorothy didn't guarantee a gem of such water every spring; nevertheless she intended to ask for fifteen hundred pounds a year for a number of years on the strength of it--this time (for contracts have their dull uses) to be clinched by a formal contract. She was not a fashion artist now; she had barely passed her Sealskin; she was a Publicity Adviser, and what she did not know about wheedling and scheming and other gross misuses of her sex was not worth knowing. And she did not care one rap for Emancipation and the Cause. She thought the Cause a very useful thing, merely because it collected all the cranks together, so that you might know where to find them if you happened to want them and how to avoid them when you did not; and, applying her publicity training to the extraordinary success "Barrage" was by this time having, she had no difficulty whatever in seeing to what that success was really due.