"Then what's the good of all your creed?" Brenton demanded shortly.
"Our creed," Brenton corrected him quite gently; more gently, even, than he had spoken to Reed Opdyke on the night before. Indeed, Scott Brenton seemed to him vastly more in need of gentleness than did Opdyke. His trouble was as deep-seated; moreover, it was complicated by a curious ingrained weakness which, Whittenden judged, it would be hard for him to down. In Opdyke's place, Brenton would have turned his face to the wall and made a long, long moan. In Brenton's position, Opdyke would have kept his flags flying gayly, as long as there was a tatter of them left.
Now, Brenton's accent showed that he resented the correction.
"Ours, if you will; at least, for the present. But, after all, what is the good?"
Whittenden's reply came promptly.
"A common platform, where we can stand side by side, while we are doing our individual work."
"But, if you don't believe in it?"
A sudden gleam of mirth came into Whittenden's clear eyes.
"Do you expect to put your foot on every single plank in any platform, Brenton? If you do, you'll need to have it built just to your measure. It seems to me that, in course of time, you'd find it a little lonely, to say nothing of the minor fact that people work together all the better for being on some sort of a common basis."
"But is work the only thing?" Brenton queried rather absently.