“Oh, it doesn’t—and it does. I think it would to you. But the question of having men here alone isn’t likely to arise. For the kind of men you’d want wouldn’t come if they thought your reputation would be endangered. There are a few survivals of romance, and the knightly spirit, and one of the last to go, if it ever goes, will be the care that men take of women’s names. It’s my experience that names rank more highly than bodies in male psychology.”

There was no sign of any remembrance of the episode in Langley’s manner the next day and Horatia found no difference in his attitude towards her. She never saw him outside the office. The curtains were hung in the little apartment. Grace sat up an informal tea-table at which Horatia assisted. Even Maud came occasionally with some of her friends to savor this bachelor life, and they pretended to envy for half an hour. It was a very pleasant apartment and Horatia found that being an intellectual in the city was far different from being an intellectual in the confines of West Park or a highbrow at the University. Not all men were afraid of brains. Charley Jones came and brought young men with him, several friends of Harvey’s came and there were others justifying themselves by this claim or that to a seat near that tea-table where Grace Walsh, looking like a Dutch picture, poured out tea and calm cynical judgments and Horatia, in a yellow silk dress on Sundays and blue serge on weekdays, pressed lemon, cream, tea cakes and joy of living on them.

It was wonderful to see how the excitement of the new life brought a richer color into Horatia’s cheeks and a glow into her eyes which made every gown the most becoming one. It was amazing to see how her power over men grew. She seemed to toss a mental challenge to every man she met, a challenge not to a combat of words or phrases but to a struggle over the interesting and vital things in the world. She was enjoying herself so much that she tempted them all to discover her secret of enjoyment.

But she allowed nothing to interfere with her work and more and more of her time was spent at the office as the fall days grew shorter and the lake more steadily grey and the work heavier. The November election promised to be a most important one in the history of the city. The Journal’s candidate, Nels Johnson, came and went in the office. He was a heavy little man with a kind shrewd face and a tolerant smile. Horatia liked him and she liked to hear him talk and give opinions for publication. Langley liked him too, she knew. She could hear them often through the door of his office discussing things which had nothing to do with the election.

“The Reds are rotten, physically and morally, and they run on a single track mentally, most of them,” Langley would say, “but I’ll be damned if they aren’t much more attractive than the slinking crowd that want to put out all the pipes in the country. I’d sooner have an old-style Tammany man than one of these ministerial sneaks.”

And Bob Brotherton, his nose a little red still and his utterance a trifle thick from indulgence in some private store of liquor to which he seemed to have eternal access, would agree. And the candidate for office would agree. And Charley Jones, with some comment on the attempt of the churches to dominate labor, would agree. And Horatia, vigorously nodding at her typewriter, would agree too that she wanted the world run by freedom and not by imprisonments.

But perhaps the nicest moments and hours for Horatia were the evenings in the office when they all worked late and tobacco and accomplishment were thick in the air. Sometimes the reporters would all be out on some errands and Langley would talk to her—always impersonally, never emotionally, but expansively, going back into the history of the city to explain some political anomaly to her and telling her, in spite of himself, about his ideas and plans. She came to respect him more and more and to believe in the fineness of his instincts. But still she never heard him say a word of his personal affairs. She wondered how and where he lived. Somewhere on the other side of the city, she knew, and that was all. He never told her about the old scandal and she never could find out more about it. At a certain point in his career Langley had simply shut his mouth and there was no one else who knew more than Harvey Williams.

Horatia gloried in the growing prestige of The Journal. Even Harvey bought it now and Maud’s early opposition had changed into a feeling that Horatia with all her eccentricity was bringing distinction upon them. She never said that to Horatia. But she talked of her “intellectual sister” without embarrassment now on the Boulevard.

CHAPTER V

MAUD had her own plans for Horatia. She herself was finding life very pleasantly successful and she followed her leaders carefully, trusting no habits of life which they did not trust and indeed regarding all other types of living as either impossible to attain or impossible to endure. She was developing the best possible setting for herself and her family. Her house broke none of the rules laid down in “House and Garden,” with its striped cretonnes and plain linens and comfortable furniture. It was not too ostentatious because the young people around her were not ostentatious, but it was a beginning. And she saw her future before her with delightful clearness through a succession of increasingly expensive automobiles, through a succession of increasingly elaborate gowns up to the day when she would own a great brick house in the city and a winter home in California. She did not take great credit to herself for this ambition. It was due to her own astuteness and Harvey’s cleverness.