But it was apparent that he had become unsettled in his religious convictions as the result of frequent subsequent meetings with his fellow-lodger, who exercised a conscious fascination over the younger man, and could induce Henry to reveal his inmost thoughts without himself volunteering much about his own personal history. Mr. P. was actuated, no doubt, mainly by sheer interest in his friend, and had no sinister end--as he conceived it--in view. So the friendship grew, to the no small annoyance of Flo Winton, who had frequent cause to chide her lover for giving more of his scanty leisure to Mr. P. than to one--mentioning no names--who had perhaps more claim upon it. At the _Leader_ office he was finding things less to his mind than he had hoped. Five years ago the editorship of a daily paper was a golden dream to him; a year ago, his brightest hope; to-day, a post involving much drudgery, more diplomacy and temporising; small satisfaction. He imagined that his case was exceptional. "If this," and "granted that," the editorship of the _Leader_ was an ideal post. Minus the ifs, it was not a bed of roses. The cyclist who is bumping along a rough road notices that his friend is wheeling smoothly on the other side, and steers across to get on the smooth track, just as his friend leaves it for the same reason reversed. We all suppose our trials to be exceptional, and the chances are that the people we are envying are envying us. Conceivably, the editorship of the _Times_ is not heavenly. There were some hundreds of ambitious journalists ready to rush for Henry's post the moment he showed signs of quitting. A newspaper that has had fifteen editors in five years will have five hundred candidates for the job when the fifteenth gives up the struggle. Henry had learned at the rate of a year a week since he became editor. That leader yesterday had displeased the chairman of directors, as it was somewhat outspoken in favour of municipal trams, and the chairman was a shareholder in the existing company. Another director wanted to see more news from the colliery districts than the paper usually contained, and a third fancied that the City news was not full enough. Yet another, a wealthy hosiery manufacturer, who was wont to boast himself a "self-made man," pointed out that they didn't like leaders to be humorous, and he was open to bet as the heditor was wrong in saying "politics was tabu," when everybody knoo as 'ow the word was "tabooed." He'd looked it hup in the dictionary 'imself. Politics and newspaper-editorship bring us strange bedfellows. The simple truth was that Henry, all too soon, had learned what an editor's responsibility meant. It meant supporting the political programme of the party which the paper represented, temporising with selfish interests, humouring ignorance when it wore diamond rings, toiling for others to take the credit, and blundering for oneself to bear the blame.