CHAPTER V BETWEEN BLOSSOM AND FRUIT Take heed, for the sake of your soul, Of the song that the city sings-- Of its bantering lip, and its bowl, And its flutter of fallen wings. JOHN HARTLEY, "The Siren City." These Lilliputian temptations--they remind us that the threads which kept Gulliver down were very small threads, but then there were so many of them!--"The Silver Poppy." "How much space shall I give Miss Vaughan?" Hartley asked of his editor. It was the end of the day following the interview, and the gentleman addressed was enjoying what he called a dry smoke, contentedly chewing a black cigar-end into obviously delectable rags and shreds. He allowed his questioner to wait for a minute or two before answering. "Who's Miss Vaughan?" Just who that lady was he knew quite well, but he took a secret delight in baiting his probationers--and Hartley above all others. "She is the lady," and the irate young man laid particular stress on the word, "the lady whom I suggested to you as being more or less before the public, as you may recall--the lady who wrote The Silver Poppy, and----" "Yes, I know all that. 'Bout how much time did you give her yesterday? The whole afternoon, I guess, wasn't it?" "I don't see what that has to do with my question," retorted Hartley. "You don't, eh! H'm; I guess you don't." He seemed bent on provoking beyond endurance the young man with the accent. And the young man with the accent could foresee that it was going to lead to but one end. He swallowed his wrath, however, and his editor swung round in his swivel chair, and replacing his cigar in its accustomed corner of a mouth that seemed to Hartley belligerently dog-like, looked at him shrewdly. "Give 'er half a column," he said sharply. "That's not very much, is it?" "What d'you want to give 'er?" "It's outside work, you know--work that I'm doing quite gratuitously," he added significantly. "Well, how much d'you want?" "Two columns of brevier--without the adornment of the usual line-cut." The character of the line-cuts used by the bureau, seldom remarkable for their beauty, was a standing joke about the office. The editor smiled enigmatically. "All right; go ahead and kill your friend with kindness if y' want to." For as a young man he himself had been a dramatic reporter in his time and more than once had been dazzled by the passing refulgence of musical comedy stars--stars with hair not half so golden as Cordelia Vaughan's. Hartley hurried home through the dingy lower-town streets, turning over many new thoughts in his mind. A revulsion of feeling had come over him. He had not as yet read The Silver Poppy, but he took a sudden, passing, unreasonable dislike to it, wondering within himself how much Cordelia Vaughan's success had been due to caprice and accident.