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Harrington as a nervous man was no less promptly generous in his impulses when convinced of error than he was quick to scent out a hostile plot. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Dryden. I see I was mistaken.” He thrust out a lean hand by way of amity. “Can’t I help?”

“Oh, no, thank you. My man will attend to everything.”

“You see I got the idea to begin with and then the explosion following so close upon your offer—-“

“Quite so,” exclaimed Dryden. “A suspicious coincidence, I admit.” He shook the proffered fingers without a shadow of resentment. “I dare say my dust-coat and goggles give me quite the highwayman effect,” he continued jollily.

“They sort of got on my nerves, I guess.” Under the spell of his generous impulse various bits of local color flattering to his companion began to suggest themselves to Harrington for his article, and he added: “I’ll take advantage of that suggestion of yours and get to work until luncheon is ready.”

Some fifteen minutes later they were seated opposite to each other at an appetizing meal. As Dryden finished his first glass of claret, he asked:

“Did you know Richard Upton?”

“The man who was killed? Not personally. But I have read about him in the society papers.”

“Ah!” There was a deep melancholy in the intonation which caused the reporter to look at his companion a little sharply. For a moment Dryden stirred in his chair as though about to make some comment, and twisted the morsel of bread at his fingers’ ends into a small pellet. But he poured out another glass of claret for each of them and said:

“He was the salt of the earth.”

“Tell me about him. I should be glad to know. I might—-“

“There’s so little to tell–it was principally charm. He was one of the most unostentatious, unselfish, high-minded, consistent men I ever knew. Completely a gentleman in the finest sense of that overworked word.”

“That’s very interesting. I should be glad—-“

Dryden shook his head. “You didn’t know him well enough. It was like the delicacy of the rose–finger it and it falls to pieces. No offence to you, of course. I doubt my own ability to do him justice, well as I knew him. But you put a stopper on that–and you were right. My kind regards,” he said, draining his second glass of claret. “The laborer is worthy of his hire, the artist must not be interfered with. It was an impertinence of me to ask to do your work.”

Harrington’s eyes gleamed. “It’s pleasant to be appreciated–to have one’s point of view comprehended. It isn’t pleasant to butt in where you’re not wanted, but there’s something bigger than that involved, the—-“

“Quite so; it was a cruel bribe; and many men in your shoes would not have been proof against it.”

“And you were in dead earnest, too, though for a moment I couldn’t believe it. But the point is–and that’s what I mean–that the public–gentlemen like you and ladies like the handsome one who looked daggers at me this morning–don’t realize that the world is bound to have the news on its breakfast-table and supper-table, and that when a man is in the business and knows his business and is trying to do the decent thing and the acceptable artistic thing, too, if I do say it, he is entitled to be taken seriously and–and trusted. There are incompetent men–rascals even–in my calling. What I contend is that you’d no right to assume that I wouldn’t do the inevitable thing decently merely because you saw me there. For, if you only knew it, I was saying to myself at that very moment that for a funeral it was the most tastefully handled I ever attended.”

“It is the inevitable thing; that’s just it. My manners were bad to begin to with, and later–” Dryden leaned forward with his elbows on the table and his head between his hands, scanning his eager companion.