Hal’s first impulse was to say “No”; but he conquered it, remembering Milly Neal’s pitiful generosity toward her lover.

“Where has he been?” he asked.

“Drunk, I guess.”

“What do you think?”

“I think yes.”

“All right, if he’s sobered up.  Tell him it mustn’t happen again.”

There was a gleam in McGuire Ellis’s eye.  “Suppose you tell him that it mustn’t happen again.  It would come with more force from you.”

Hal whirled in his chair.  “Mac, what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.  I was just thinking of ‘Kitty the Cutie.’”

“What were you thinking of her?”

“Only that Max Veltman would have gone through hell-fire for her.  And, from his looks, he’s been through and had the heart burned out of him.”

With that he resumed his proof-reading in a dogged silence.

To Hal’s great relief Veltman kept out of his way.  The man seemed dazed with misery, but did his work well enough.  Rumors reached the office that he was striving to gain a refuge from his sufferings by giving all his leisure hours to work in the Rookeries district, under the direction of the Reverend Norman Hale.  Ellis was of the opinion that his mind was somewhat affected, and that he would bear watching a bit; and was the more disturbed in that Veltman shared the secret of the great epidemic “spread,” now practically completed for the “Clarion’s” publishing or suppressing.  Ellis held the belief that, now, Hal would order it suppressed.  The man who had shirked his responsibility to Milly Neal could hardly be relied on for the stamina necessary to such an exploitation.

The time was at hand for the decision to be made.  The two physicians, Elliot and Merritt, pressed for publication.  Every day, they pointed out, not only meant a further risk of life, but also increased the impending danger of a general outburst which would find the city wholly unprepared.  On the other hand, the journalists, Ellis and Wayne, held out for delay.  They perceived the one weak point in their case, that neither a dead body nor a living patient had as yet come to the hands of the constituted authorities for diagnosis.  The sole determination had been made on corpses carried across the line and now probably impossible of identification.  The committee fund was doing its work of concealment effectually.  But Fate tripped the strategy board at last, using the Reverend Norman Hale as its agent.

Since Milly Neal’s death, the Reverend Norman had tried to find time to call on Hal Surtaine, and had failed.  He wished to talk with him about Veltman.  Three days after the funeral he had hauled the “Clarion’s” foreman out of the gutter, stood between him and suicide for one savage night of struggle, and listened to the remorse of a haunted soul.  Being a man and a brother, the Reverend Norman forbore blame or admonition; being a physician of the inner being, he devised work for