“Consideration of policy which—­”

“Policy!  Oh, my God!  And the people dying!  Harrington Surtaine,”—­his eyes blazed into the other’s with the flame of fanaticism,—­“I tell you, if you don’t accept this opportunity that the Lord gives you, you and your paper are damned.  Do you know what it means to damn the soul of a paper?  Why, man, there are people who believe in the ‘Clarion’ like gospel.”

Hal got to his feet.  “Veltman, I dare say you mean well.  But you don’t understand this.”

“Don’t I!” The face took on a sudden appalling savagery.  “Don’t I know you’re bought and paid for!  Sold out!  That’s what you’ve done.  A bargain!  A bargain!  Pay my little price and I’ll do your meanest bidding.  I’d rather have hell burning at my heart as it burns now than what you’ve got rotting at yours, young Surtaine.”

The tensity of Hal’s restraint broke.  With one powerful effort he sent the foreman whirling through the open door into the hall, slammed the door after him, and stood shaking.  He heard and felt the jar of Veltman’s body as it struck the wall, and slumped to the floor; then the slow limp of his retreating footsteps.  With a seething brain he returned to his proof—­and shuddered away from it.  There was blood spattered over the print.  Hurriedly he thrust it aside and rang for a fresh galley.  But the red spots rose between his eyes and the work, like an accusation, like a prophecy.  Of a sudden he beheld this great engine of print which had been, first, the caprice of his last flicker of irresponsible and headlong youth, then the very mould in which his eager and ambitious manhood was to form and fulfill itself—­he beheld this vast mechanism blazingly illumined as with some inner fire, and now become a terrific genius, potent beyond the powers of humanity, working out the dire complications of men, and the tragic destruction of women.  And he beheld himself, fast in its grip.

He thrust the proof into the tube, scrawled the “O.K.” order on it for the morrow, and hurried away from the office as from a place accursed.

That night conscience struck at him once more, making a weapon of words from the book of a dead master.  He had been reading “Beauchamp’s Career”; and, seeking refuge from the torture of thought in its magic, he came upon the novelist-philosopher’s damning indictment of modern journalism: 

"And this Press, declaring itself independent, can hardly walk for fear of treading on an interest here, an interest there.  It cannot have a conscience.  It is a bad guide, a false guardian; its abject claim to be our national and popular interpreter—­even that is hollow and a mockery.  It is powerful only when subservient.  An engine of money, appealing to the sensitiveness of money, it has no connection with the mind of the nation.  And that it is not of, but apart from the people, may be seen when great crises come—­in strong gales the power of the Press collapses; it wheezes like a pricked pigskin of a piper."

Hal flung the book from him.  But its accusations pursued him through the gates of sleep, and poisoned his rest.