He then explained himself, in well-ordered sentences:
"The State Labor Commission feels strongly that the public good demands a new factory law at this time, requiring all owners to conform to a certain higher standard of comfort and safety for their employees. I must add that I fully share the Commission's feeling. It is considered that some publicity in the press is needed, preparing the public mind for a progressive law by showing what present conditions are. A series of articles has been decided upon, to begin about the first of November and continue daily till the legislature meets in January. I have agreed to write these articles. I thought it only fair," he ended short, "to tell you this."
The girl heard him with startled astonishment. She had never, of course, been interested in her father's factory other than as a family symbol; and that factitious interest which she had felt at times last year, born of this man's hostility, was gone long since, effaced by a tide of stronger feelings. So his sudden exhumation of the topic as a cause of war now came upon her with the harshest discordance. It seemed almost like a wanton wounding of her, somehow like sheer disloyalty in him. Surely if there were need of articles, this man might leave them to somebody else to write....
Her young gaze was full of an unconscious reproachfulness.
"All that means that you are going to put some more letters in the paper attacking my father?"
"I'm afraid it's inevitable it will seem so to you."
"Oh,"' said she, it seemed involuntarily, "I don't see how you can!"
The young man Mr. V.V. made no reply. It may be that he didn't see how he could either....
He looked away from the reproachful eyes, slate-blue to match the plumes in the hat: and there were phrases from his articles singing and kicking in his head, phrases which would cry in the penny newspaper as no voice could cry from the wilderness. Ten thousand words he had ready now, in the old secretary upstairs; hard words all, that broke heads or hearts, faiths implied too, it might be, and did not care; or didn't mean to show it if they did. And he thought, too, of a little friend he had, just pulled back from death's door, and hardly ready for her Trip now, after ten weeks. So of course there could be no flinching now....
Through the door there came the continuous sounds of the nearness of the multitude, but these two seemed almost as alone in his old hotel as they had been on another afternoon long ago.