After she had played, Miss Van Arsdale declared that she must go, whereupon Banneker insisted upon taking her to her hotel. To her protests against dragging him away from his own party, he retorted that the party could very well run itself without him; his parties often did, when he was specially pressed in his work. Accepting this, his friend elected to walk; she wanted to hear more about The Patriot. What did she think of it, he asked. "I don't expect you to like it," he added. "That doesn't matter. I do tremendously admire your editorials. They're beautifully done; the perfection of clarity. But the rest of the paper--I can't see you in it." "Because I'm not there, as an individual." He expounded to her his theory of journalism. That was a just characterization of Junior Masters, he said: the three-ringed circus. He, Banneker, would run any kind of a circus they wanted, to catch and hold their eyes; the sensational acts, the clowns of the funny pages, the blare of the bands, the motion, the color, and the spangles; all to beguile them into reading and eventually to thinking. "But we haven't worked it out yet, as we should. What I'm really aiming at is a saturated solution, as the chemists say: Not a saturated solution of circulation, for that isn't possible, but a saturated solution of influence. If we can't put The Patriot into every man's house, we ought to be able to put it into every man's mind. All things to all men: that's the formula. We're far from it yet, but we're on the road. And in the editorials, I'm making people stir their minds about real things who never before developed a thought beyond the everyday, mechanical processes of living." "To what end?" she asked doubtfully. "Does it matter? Isn't the thinking, in itself, end enough?" "Brutish thinking if it's represented in your screaming headlines." "Predigested news. I want to preserve all their brain-power for my editorial page. And, oh, how easy I make it for them! Thoughts of one syllable." "And you use your power over their minds to incite them to discontent." "Certainly." "But that's dreadful, Ban! To stir up bitterness and rancor among people." "Don't you be misled by cant, Miss Camilla," adjured Banneker. "The contented who have everything to make them content have put a stigma on discontent. They'd have us think it a crime. It isn't. It's a virtue." "Ban! A virtue?" "Well; isn't it? Call it by the other name, ambition. What then?" Miss Van Arsdale pondered with troubled eyes. "I see what you mean," she confessed. "But the discontent that arises within one's self is one thing; the 'divine discontent.' It's quite another to foment it for your own purposes in the souls of others." "That depends upon the purpose. If the purpose is to help the others, through making their discontent effective to something better, isn't it justified?" "But isn't there always the danger of making a profession of discontent?"