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“And why don’t you?” cried Helen Page.

“Because I’m as rotten as the rest of them!” cried Anita Flagg. “Because I’m a coward. And that’s why I’m crying. Haven’t I the right to cry?”

At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward, in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing Sam’s story’ of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor’s cigar was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the office. “In the name of Mike!” he shouted. “What IS this?”

The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table, was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He came back to earth.

“What’s what?” Sam demanded.

At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward Collins quickly and snatched up Sam’s copy. The story already was late–and it was important.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.

“Read the opening paragraph,” protested Collins. “It’s like that for a column! It’s all about a girl–about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word about Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It’s not a news story at all. It’s an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don’t know what it is. And, what’s worse,” wailed the copy editor defiantly and to the amazement of all, “it’s so darned good that you can’t touch it. You’ve got to let it go or kill it.”

The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade, were racing over Sam’s written words. He thrust the first page back at Collins.

“Is it all like that?”

“There’s a column like that!”

“Run it just as it is,” commanded the managing editor. “Use it for your introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut out Flagg entirely. Call it ‘The Red Cross Girl.’ And play it up strong with pictures.” He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.

“What’s the idea, Ward?” he said. “This is a newspaper–not a magazine!”

The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also smiled, but unhappily.

“I know it’s not news, Sir,” he said; “but that’s the way I saw the story–outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the governor’s staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside, this girl right on the job–taking care of the sick and wounded. It seemed to me that a million from a man that won’t miss a million didn’t stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I wanted to say,” continued Sam stoutly “was that the moving spirit of the hospital was not in the man who signed the checks, but in these women who do the work–the nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you called ‘The Red Cross Girl.'”

Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.

“But it’s not news!”

“It’s not news,” said Elliott doubtfully; “but it’s the kind of story that made Frank O’Malley famous. It’s the kind of story that drives men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls ‘the illegitimate sister.'”