"Another friend from your picturesque past is down below," said Edmonds, and named Gardner. "Lord! That fellow nearly cost me my life, last time we met," laughed Banneker. Then his face altered. Pain drew its sharp lines there, pain and the longing of old memories still unassuaged. "Just the same, I'll be glad to see him." He sought out the Californian, found him deep in talk with Guy Mallory of The Ledger, who had come in late, gave him hearty greeting, and looked about for Camilla Van Arsdale. She was supping in the center of a curiously assorted group, part of whom remembered the old romance of her life, and part of whom had identified her, by some chance, as Royce Melvin, the composer. All of them were paying court to her charm and intelligence. She made a place beside herself for Banneker. "We've been discussing The Patriot, Ban," she said, "and Mr. Gaines has embalmed you, as an editorial writer, in the amber of one of his best epigrams." The Great Gaines made a deprecating gesture. "My little efforts always sound better when I'm not present," he protested. "To be the subject of any Gaines epigram, however stinging, is fame in itself," said Banneker. "And no sting in this one. 'Attic salt and American pep,'" she quoted. "Isn't it truly spicy?" Banneker bowed with half-mocking appreciation. "I fancy, though, that Mr. Gaines prefers his journalistic egg more _au naturel_." "Sometimes," admitted the most famous of magazine editors, "I could dispense with some of the pep." "I like the pep, too, Ban." Betty Raleigh, looking up from a seat where she sat talking to a squat and sensual-looking man, a dweller in the high places and cool serenities of advanced mathematics whom jocular-minded Nature had misdowered with the face of a satyr, interposed the suave candor of her voice. "I actually lick my lips over your editorials even where I least agree with them. But the rest of the paper--Oh, dear! It screeches." "Modern life is such a din that one has to screech to be heard above it," said Banneker pleasantly. "Isn't it the newspapers which make most of the din, though?" suggested the mathematician. "Shouting against each other," said Gaines. "Like Coney Island barkers for rival shows," put in Junior Masters. "Just for variety how would it do to try the other tack and practice a careful but significant restraint?" inquired Betty. "Wouldn't sell a ticket," declared Banneker. "Still, if we all keep on yelling in the biggest type and hottest words we can find," pointed out Edmonds, "the effect will pall." "Perhaps the measure of success is in finding something constantly more strident and startling than the other fellow's war whoop," surmised Masters. "I have never particularly admired the steam calliope as a form of expression," observed Miss Van Arsdale. "Ah!" said the actress, smiling, "but Royce Melvin doesn't make music for circuses." "And a modern newspaper is a circus," pronounced the satyr-like scholar.