"I look at it this way," he said, in a slow, controlled voice. "The _Post_ has said again and again that _this_ legislature must establish a reformatory. That was the burden of a long series of editorials, running back over a year, which, as I thought, had your entire approval. Now, at the critical moment, when it was only necessary to say once more what had been said a hundred times before, the _Post_ suddenly turns about and, in effect, authorizes this legislature not to establish the reformatory. The House killed the bill just now. Bangor quoted from the _Post_ editorial. There can be no doubt, of course, that it turned a number of votes--enough to have safely carried the bill." West looked disturbed and unhappy. "But if we find out that this legislature is so drained by inescapable expenses that it simply cannot provide the money? Suppose the State had been swept by a plague? Suppose there was a war and a million of unexpected expenses had suddenly dropped on us from the clouds? Wouldn't you agree that circumstances altered cases, and that, under such circumstances, everything that was not indispensable to the State's existence would have to go over?" Queed felt like answering West's pepper-fire of casuistry by throwing Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his determination to avoid a "scene," he felt his bottled-up indignation rising. A light showed in his stone-gray eyes. "Can't you really see that these circumstances are not in the least like those? Did you do me the courtesy to read what I wrote about this so-called 'economy argument' last night?" "Certainly," said West, surprised by the other's tone. "But clever as it was, it was not based, in my opinion, on a clear understanding of the facts as they actually exist. You and I stay so close inside of four walls here that we are apt to get out of touch with practical conditions. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get new facts, from a confidential and highly authoritative source. In the light of these--I wish I could explain them more fully to you, but I was pledged to secrecy--I am obliged to tell you that what you had written seemed to me altogether out of focus, unfair, and extreme." "Did you get these facts, as you call them, from Plonny Neal?" "As to that, I am at liberty to say nothing." Queed, looking at him, saw that he had. He began to feel sorry for West. "I would give four hundred and fifty dollars," he said slowly--"all the money that I happen to have--if you had told me last night that you meant to do this." "I am awfully sorry," said West, with a touch of dignity, "that you take it so hard. But I assure you--" "I know Plonny Neal even better than you do," continued Queed, "for I have known him as his social equal. He is laughing at you to-day." West, of course, knew better than that. The remark confirmed his belief that Queed had brooded over the reformatory till he saw everything about it distorted and magnified.