The abrupt extension frightened her. The story of Amritsar now unfolding for her from the Indian mail--in its hatelessness, in its devotion to truth and unsentimental love for the people--unveiled for her eyes a _man_--not Gandhi, not Nagar, but Richard Cobden, himself. The few sentences he had inserted in his letter about Gandhi, “--the great thing you have done, pushing me back, forever pushing me back into myself, until the day when I shall be able to _stand_, not fall for you!”--in these words there was for Pidge an invincible call. She had searched the language for another expression to convey what that little slangy verb “to fall for” meant. It was one of her treasures. When one “fell for” a person or thing--one couldn’t stand for the same. One was captive, not co-worker. Here was the difference between infatuation and romance. Dicky had found it out. There was expressed in his letter more than she had dreamed as possible; and this time words thrilled her furiously, because she believed they had become working knowledge, before it had occurred to him to express the idea. She saw this knowledge working out in his studies of Gandhi. He did not “fall for” the Little Man. He did not rush into eulogy; he sought to understand. In a word, he stood for Gandhi. But now that Dicky was ready to stand for her, she was ready to fall, and all her horizons were being pushed back to give her room. ... She was very weary. She had not known it before. _The Public Square_ thrived. It was strong pulsed with new life. For the first time in her experience she sensed from the magazine’s field, following the issue of the first Amritsar story--silence, the perfect tribute, the instantaneous readjustment of all other journals; then crowded mails, the answer from people everywhere. Something about Gandhi touched hundreds of people to the point of saying so, in a letter to _The Public Square_. Yes, she was weary. She had held grimly to the post. She wanted to turn it over to Dicky Cobden now.... It had been like this once before--on the night of Somebody’s Shoulder. She had wanted to give him what he wanted that night--the tiredest and most hopeless girl in New York. Only that night it had been--for what he had. Now it was for what he was. John Higgins lost his bearings in the city traffic. A copy of the issue containing the first section of the Amritsar story was in the old editor’s hand when he fell in the street. She was with him for several hours, until the end. He looked at her long and strangely--eyes more “run-out” than ever. He did not seem to hear her words, but if she remained in silence too long, a little frown gathered on his forehead, and his hand would pull at hers. He had waited for the big story. Once he said: “I wish Dicky would come,” and that brought Pidge’s slow tears. * * * * *