“Of course not.  Nor is that what I advocate.  I’m for the under dog.  For fair play.  So are you, aren’t you?  I saw your name on the Committee List of the Consumers’ League, dealing with conditions in the department stores.”

“That’s different,” she said.  “Those girls haven’t a chance in some of the shops.  They’re brutalized.  The stores don’t even pretend to obey the laws.  We are trying to work out some sort of organization, now, for them.”

“Yet you’re hostile to organized labor!  Who shall ever understand the feminine mind!  Some day you’ll be coming to us for help.”

“Very likely.  It must be a curious sensation, Ban, to have the consciousness of the power that you wield, and to be responsible to nobody on earth.”

“To the public that reads us,” he corrected.

“Not a real responsibility.  There is no authority over you; no appeal from your judgments.  Hasn’t that something to do with people’s dislike and distrust of the newspapers; the sense that so much irresponsible power is wrong?”

“Yet,” he said, “any kind of censorship is worse than the evil it remedies.  I’ve never shown you my creed, have I?”

His manner was half jocular; there was a smile on his lips, but his eyes seemed to look beyond the petty troubles and problems of his craft to a final and firm verity.

“Tell me,” she bade him.

He drew his watch out and opened the back.  For a moment she thought, with confused emotions, that she would see there a picture of herself of which he might have possessed himself somewhere.  She closed her eyes momentarily against the fear of that anti-climax.  When she opened them, it was to read, in a clear, fine print those high and sure words of Milton’s noblest message: 

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength.  Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?  Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.

Twice she read the pregnant message.

“I have it,” said she gravely.  “To keep—­for always.”

“Some day I’ll put it at the head of The Patriot.”

“Why not now?”

“Not ready.  I want to be surer; absolutely sure.”

“I’m sure,” she declared superbly; “of you.”

“You make me sure of myself, Io.  But there’s Marrineal.”

“Yes; there’s Marrineal.  You must have a paper of your own, mustn’t you, Ban, eventually?”

“Perhaps.  If I ever get enough money to own it absolutely.”

“Only four years ago,” she murmured, with apparent irrelevancy.  “And now—­”

“When shall I see you again?” he asked anxiously as she rose.  “Are you coming Saturday night?”

“Of course,” said Io.