"Not many. Only two, vitally. You and the paper." She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back upon him afterward. "I shan't be jealous of that. Not as long as you're true to it. But I don't think you care for The Patriot, for itself." "Oh, don't I!" "If you do, it's only because it's part of you; your voice; your power. Because it belongs to you. I wonder if you love me mostly for the same reason." "Say, the reverse reason. Because I belong so entirely to you that nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you. Can't you realize and believe?" "No; I shouldn't be jealous of the paper," she mused, ignoring his appeal. Then, with a sudden transition: "I like your Russell Edmonds. Am I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?" "Of mind and soul. You would be the one to see it. '.............the nobleness that lies Sleeping but never dead in other men, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own'"-- he quoted, smiling into her eyes. "Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?" "Often. He's my main and only reliance, politically." "Only politically? Does he ever comment on other editorials? The one on Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?" Banneker was faintly surprised. "No. Why should he? Did you discuss that with him?" "Indeed not! I wouldn't discuss that particular editorial with any one but you." He moved uneasily. "Aren't you attaching undue importance to a very trivial subject? You know that was half a joke, anyway." "Was it?" she murmured. "Probably I take it too seriously. But--but Harvey Wheelwright came into one of our early talks, almost our first about real things. When I began to discover you; when 'The Voices' first sang to us. And he wasn't one of the Voices, exactly, was he?" "He? He's a bray! But neither was Sears-Roebuck one of the Voices. Yet you liked my editorial on that." "I adored it! You believed what you were writing. So you made it beautiful." "Nothing could make Harvey Wheelwright beautiful. But, at least, you'll admit I made him--well, appetizing." His face took on a shade. "Love's labor lost, too," he added. "We never did run the Wheelwright serial, you know." "Why?" "Because the infernal idiot had to go and divorce a perfectly respectable, if plain and middle-aged wife, in order to marry a quite scandalous Chicago society flapper." "What connection has that with the serial?" "Don't you see? Wheelwright is the arch-deacon of the eternal proprieties and pieties. Purity of morals. Hearth and home. Faithful unto death, and so on. Under that sign he conquers--a million pious and snuffy readers, per book. Well, when he gets himself spread in the Amalgamated Wire dispatches, by a quick divorce and a hair-trigger marriage, puff goes his piety--and his hold on his readers. We just quietly dropped him." "But his serial was just as good or as bad as before, wasn't it?"