Tisdale went over to a chair near the window and began to go over those abridged columns.  He turned the page, and his lips set grimly.  At last he closed the magazine and looked off through the drifting snow.  He had been grossly misrepresented, and the reason was clear.

This editor, struggling to establish a new periodical, had used Daniels’ material to attract the public eye.  He may even have had political ambitions and aimed deeper to strike the administration through him.  He may have taken this method to curry favor with certain moneyed men.  Still, still, what object had there been in leaving Weatherbee completely out of the story?  Weatherbee, who should have carried the leading role; who, lifting the adventure high above the sensational, had made it something fine.

Again his thoughts ran back to that cruise on the Aquila.  He saw that group on the after-deck; Rainier lifting southward like a phantom mountain over the opal sea; and westward the Olympics, looming clear-cut, vivid as a scene in the tropics; the purplish blue of the nearer height sharply defined against the higher amethyst slope that marked the gorge of the Dosewallups.  This setting had brought the tragedy to his mind, and to evade the questions Morganstein pressed, he had commenced to relate the adventure.  But afterwards he had found himself going into the more intimate detail with a hope of reviving some spark of appreciation of David in the heart of his wife.  And he had believed that he had.  Still, who else, in all that little company, could have had any motive in leaving out Weatherbee?  Why had she told the story at all?  She was a woman of great self-control, but also she had depths of pride.  Had she, in the high tide of her anger or pique, taken this means to retaliate for the disappointment he had caused her?

The approaching work-train whistled the station.  He rose and went back to the operator’s desk and filled another blank.  This time he addressed a prominent attorney, and his close friend, in Washington, D.C.  And the message ran: 

“See Sampson’s Magazine, March, page 330.  Find whether revised or Daniels’ copy.”

Toward noon the following day the express began to crawl cautiously out, with the rotaries still bucking ahead, through the great snow canyons.  The morning of the sixteenth he had left Spokane with the great levels of the Columbia desert stretching before him.  And that afternoon at Wenatchee, with the white gates of the Cascades a few hours off, a messenger called his name down the aisle.  The answer had come from his attorney.  The story was straight copy; published as received.

CHAPTER XXV

THE IDES OF MARCH