"But I can't bear to think of her waiting there for me and my never coming."

"You'll have to think of it. That's your punishment. Luxurious self-indulgence must be paid for." "But the poor girl?"

"The poor girl will wait this Thursday and will wait next. Then she'll tell her story to a fellowservant, and the fellow-servant will reply with a somewhat similar incident and the remark that no men are to be trusted, and the incident will gradually close." "Poor girl!" said Rudd.

But he had the strength of mind not to go to Swiss Cottage.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH RUDD IS SUDDENLY CALLED UPON TO DENY A PROPHET AND INSTRUCT HIS FELLOW MEN

RUDD had not been long at The Post-Meridian

when on arriving one morning he was told that Mr. Luard wanted him at once in the editor's room. As he walked thither he searched his memory for indiscretions in recent paragraphs; but he could think of none.

"It's all right," said Luard reassuringly, as Rudd entered with his expression of alarmed surprise. "It's not the sack. You don't get the sack from me. Thank Heaven, there's a sacking department. I've just heard that neither Ward nor Castle can come to-day; they're both down with influenza. So I want you to do the leader."

"The leader!" Rudd gasped.

"Yes, it's quite easy. It'll take you about an hour. I'd do it myself only there are too many other things: proofs, and so on. You know perhaps that Enderby made an important speech last night."

Rudd had to admit that he didn't know.

Luard groaned. "Haven't you read the papers?" "Yes, but I was hunting for other things."

"Well, he made a speech last night. Here it is. Read it carefully. Then go for him. Let him have it. The two points to bring out are that disarmament could never be practical, the best preparation for peace being preparedness for war; and that the disestablishment of the Church would be an iniquity. Let him have it. Don't spare him."

Rudd retired to the next room, sacred to old Castle, his pipe and his daily castigation of the Liberal party, and studied Enderby's speech.

Enderby had always been his man, and every word of it seemed to him wise and true. Rudd had no politics beyond a sentimental leaning towards those that were talked at home in his early years, and a general feeling that the word Liberal carried with it finer aspirations than the word Tory.

It was not then partisanship which made him agree with the speech, but genuine intellectual sympathy. And now he must riddle it, prove it wrong root and branch, hold up its author as a charlatan and sentimentalist. In short, he must let Enderby have it.

Rudd's hand hovered over the paper. He had no notion how to begin. And the cheek of it, too! It was not even as if he had been to Oxford or Cambridge. He had no right at all.

And then by an inspiration he wrote the word "We," and found that all was easy. From that corporate pronoun, which removed the responsibility

from himself and divided it between the whole staff, even to the office-boy downstairs, he derived comfort, strength and an eloquence that surprised him. He let Enderby have it.

Luard made a few corrections on the proof, toning down some of the expressions and generally lightening the punishment.

"Not a bad start," he said, "but a little on the severe side. You young devils are so extreme."

Rudd gasped. He had not fully realized the position as he wrote.

"Do you think," he forced himself to ask easily, as he filled his pipe, "do you think that kind of article has any influence ?"

"Devil a bit," said Luard. "Not in London, at any rate. People read leaders for the pleasure of agreeing with them. If they can't agree, it is the journalist who is wrong."

Rudd felt easier; his apostasy was beginning to assume the guise of a joke.

"I hope Castle will be better to-morrow," he said. "There's no fun in leader-writing."

"There's an extra guinea though," said Luard. The cap and bells fell from the head of his apostasy with a crash. He thought of Judas

After a perplexed afternoon Rudd wrote a note to Luard.

"DEAR LUARD," he wrote, "I hope you won't ask me to write any more leaders, except on social subjects. I don't want to say things I don't believe. If

this attitude of mine puts you in any hole I am very sorry, anything else you like to give me to do extra I will do with pleasure and without payment; it is only going against my conscience that I kick at." The next morning the two leader-writers were still away, but Rudd was not sent for. It was understood that Mr. Luard was writing the article himself.

Just as Rudd was leaving, a note was brought to him with these words on it: "Lunch, Marble Hall, 1.0.-F. L."

"Now let's talk," said Luard when they had finished eating. "Your letter was all right, of course. But it was also all wrong. It was all right for a millionaire individualist who has time and money to keep his soul in cotton wool, but rubbish for a young journalist with his career to make. I respect you for writing it, and possibly despise myself for never having done the same. But looking at it nakedly, what does it mean?"

He fixed Rudd with his bright commanding eye. "What does it mean?" he repeated.

Rudd, whose one longing was that nothing should lose him the intimacy of this magnetic adventurer, began to wish he had done nothing.

"It means," said Luard, "that you are proposing to get through life without making any use of life's essential lubrication."

"What is that?" Rudd said.

"Compromise," said Luard. "To come down into Fleet Street as a Liberal to earn your living on a