Dave surveyed the obscure small-towners with a last tolerant smile and withdrew.

“My!” said Gideon, which for him was strong speech.

“Talks like an atheist,” said Sharon.

“Mustn’t judge him harshly,” warned Harvey D.

* * * * *

So it came that Merle Dalton Whipple, born Cowan, was rather peremptorily summoned to meet these older Whipples at another conference.  It was politely termed a conference by Harvey D., though Sharon warmly urged a simpler description of the meeting, declaring that Merle should be told he was to come home and behave himself.  Harvey D. and Gideon, however, agreed upon the more tactful summons.  They discussed, indeed, the propriety of admitting Sharon to the conference.  Each felt that he might heedlessly offend the young intellectual by putting things with a bluntness for which he had often been conspicuous.  Yet they agreed at last that he might be present, for each secretly distrusted his own firmness in the presence of one with so strong an appeal as their boy.  They admonished Sharon to be gentle.  But each hoped that if the need rose he would cease to be gentle.

Merle obeyed the call, and in the library of the Whipple New Place, where once he had been chosen to bear the name of the house, he listened with shocked amazement while Harvey D., with much worried straightening of pictures, rugs, and chairs, told him why Whipple money could no longer meet the monthly deficit of the New Dawn.  The most cogent reason that Harvey D. could advance at first was that there were too many Liberty Bonds to be bought.

Merle, with his world-weary gesture, swept the impeding lock from his pale brow and set pained eyes upon his father by adoption.  He was unable to believe this monstrous assertion.  He stared his incredulity.  Harvey D. winced.  He felt that he had struck some defenseless child a cruel blow.  Gideon shot the second gun in this unhuman warfare.

“My boy, it won’t do.  Harvey is glossing it a bit when he says the money is needed for bonds.  You deserve the truth—­we are not going to finance any longer a magazine that is against all our traditions and all our sincerest beliefs.”

“Ah, I see,” said Merle.  His tone was grim.  Then he broke into a dry, bitter laugh.  “The interests prevail!”

“Looks like it,” said Sharon, and he, too, laughed dryly.

“If you would only try to get our point of view,” broke in Harvey D.  “We feel—­”

He was superbly silenced by Merle, who in his best New Dawn manner exposed the real truth.  The dollar trembled on its throne, the fat bourgeoisie—­he spared a withering glance for Sharon, who was the only fat Whipple in the world—­would resort to brutal force to silence those who saw the truth and were brave enough to speak it out.

“It’s the age-old story,” he went on, again sweeping the lock of hair from before his flashing glance.  “Privilege throttles truth where it can.  I should have expected nothing else; I have long known there was no soil here that would nourish our ideals.  I couldn’t long hope for sympathy from mere exploiters of labour.  But the die is cast.  God helping me, I must follow the light.”