"By whom is society news read? By two classes," expounded the veteran; "those whose names appear, and those who are envious of those whose names appear. Well, we're after the envious." "Still I don't see. With what purpose?' "Jim Simpson, who has just got his grocery bill for more than he can pay, reads a high-colored account of Mrs. Stumpley-Triggs's aquatic dinner served in the hundred-thousand-dollar swimming-pool on her Westchester estate. That makes Jim think." "You mean that it makes him discontented." "Well, discontent is a mighty leaven." Miss Van Arsdale directed her fine and serious eyes upon Banneker. "So it comes back to the cult of discontent. Is that Mr. Marrineal's formula, too, Mr. Edmonds?" "Underneath all his appearance of candor, Marrineal's a secret animal," said Edmonds. "Does he leave you a free hand with your editorials, Ban?" inquired the outsider. "Absolutely." "Watches the circulation only," said Edmonds. "Thus far," he added. "You're looking for an ulterior motive, then," interpreted Miss Van Arsdale. "I'm looking for whatever I can find in Marrineal, Miss Van Arsdale," confessed the patriarch of the office. "As yet I haven't found much." "I have," said Banneker. "I've discovered his theory of journalism. We three, Edmonds, Marrineal, and I, regard this business from three diverse viewpoints. To Edmonds it's a vocation and a rostrum. He wants really, under his guise as the most far-seeing news man of his time, to call sinners against society to repentance, or to force repentance down their throats. There's a good deal of the stern evangelist about you, you know, Pop." "And you?" The other's smile seemed enmeshed in the dainty spiral of smoke brooding above his pursed lips. "Oh, I'm more the pedagogue. With me, too, the game is a vocation. But it's a different one. I'd like to marshal men's minds as a generalissimo marshals armies." "In the bonds of your own discipline?" asked Miss Van Arsdale. "If I could chain a mind I'd be the most splendid tyrant of history. No. Free leadership of the free is good enough." "If Marrineal will leave you free," commented the veteran. "What's your diagnosis of Marrineal, then?" "A priest of Baal." "With The Patriot in the part of Baal?" "Not precisely The Patriot. Publicity, rather, of which The Patriot is merely the instrument. Marrineal's theory of publicity is interesting. It may even be true. Substantially it is this: All civilized Americans fear and love print; that is to say, Publicity, for which read Baal. They fear it for what it may do to them. They love and fawn on it for what it may do for them. It confers the boon of glory and launches the bolts of shame. Its favorites, made and anointed from day to day, are the blessed of their time. Those doomed by it are the outcasts. It sits in momentary judgment, and appeal from its decisions is too late to avail anything to its victims. A species of auto-juggernaut, with Marrineal at the wheel."