“Wait!” he cried. There was a ring of resentment in his voice, but his square face that had been grudgingly non-committal was now aglow with excitement. “Of course you’re right!” he exclaimed. “There’s a damned infernal conspiracy! Now what can I do to help?”
“Help?” she asked blankly.
“Help work up the evidence? Help reveal the conspiracy?”
She had not yet quite got her bearings concerning this new Bruce.
“Help? Why should you help? Oh, I see,” she said coldly; “it would make a nice sensational story for your paper.”
He flushed at her cutting words, and his square jaw set.
“I suppose I might follow your example of a minute ago and say that I don’t care what you think. But I don’t mind telling you a few things, and giving you a chance to understand me if you want to. I was on a Chicago paper, and had a big place that was growing bigger. I could have sold the Express when my uncle left it to me, and stayed there; but I saw a chance, with a paper of my own, to try out some of my own ideas, so I came to Westville. My idea of a newspaper is that its function is to serve the people—make them think—bring them new ideas—to be ever watching their interests. Of course, I want to make money—I’ve got to, or go to smash; but I’d rather run a candy store than run a sleepy, apologetic, afraid-of-a-mouse, mere money-making sheet like the Clarion, that would never breathe a word against the devil’s fair name so long as he carried a half-inch ad. You called me a yellow journalist yesterday. Well, if to tell the truth in the hardest way I know how, to tell it so that it will hit people square between the eyes and make ’em sit up and look around ’em—if that is yellow then I’m certainly a yellow journalist, and I thank God Almighty for inventing the breed!”
As Katherine listened to his snappy, vibrant words, as she looked at his powerful, dominant figure, and into his determined face with its flashing eyes, she felt a reluctant warmth creep through her being.
“Perhaps—I may have been mistaken about you,” she said.