“Yes, I can bear witness to that in any court of justice.  You’ve done it a great deal more than I could, Basil.  And it was just the same way with those horrible insurance people.”

“I know,” March went on, trying to be proof against her flatteries, or at least to look as if he did not deserve praise; “I know that what Lindau said was offensive to him, and I can understand how he felt that he had a right to punish it.  All I say is that he had no right to punish it through me.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. March, askingly.

“If it had been a question of making ‘Every Other Week’ the vehicle of Lindau’s peculiar opinions—­though they’re not so very peculiar; he might have got the most of them out of Ruskin—­I shouldn’t have had any ground to stand on, or at least then I should have had to ask myself whether his opinions would be injurious to the magazine or not.”

“I don’t see,” Mrs. March interpolated, “how they could hurt it much worse than Colonel Woodburn’s article crying up slavery.”

“Well,” said March, impartially, “we could print a dozen articles praising the slavery it’s impossible to have back, and it wouldn’t hurt us.  But if we printed one paper against the slavery which Lindau claims still exists, some people would call us bad names, and the counting-room would begin to feel it.  But that isn’t the point.  Lindau’s connection with ‘Every Other Week’ is almost purely mechanical; he’s merely a translator of such stories and sketches as he first submits to me, and it isn’t at all a question of his opinions hurting us, but of my becoming an agent to punish him for his opinions.  That is what I wouldn’t do; that’s what I never will do.”

“If you did,” said his wife, “I should perfectly despise you.  I didn’t understand how it was before.  I thought you were just holding out against Dryfoos because he took a dictatorial tone with you, and because you wouldn’t recognize his authority.  But now I’m with you, Basil, every time, as that horrid little Fulkerson says.  But who would ever have supposed he would be so base as to side against you?”

“I don’t know,” said March, thoughtfully, “that we had a right to expect anything else.  Fulkerson’s standards are low; they’re merely business standards, and the good that’s in him is incidental and something quite apart from his morals and methods.  He’s naturally a generous and right-minded creature, but life has taught him to truckle and trick, like the rest of us.”

“It hasn’t taught you that, Basil.”

“Don’t be so sure.  Perhaps it’s only that I’m a poor scholar.  But I don’t know, really, that I despise Fulkerson so much for his course this morning as for his gross and fulsome flatteries of Dryfoos last night.  I could hardly stomach it.”

His wife made him tell her what they were, and then she said, “Yes, that was loathsome; I couldn’t have believed it of Mr. Fulkerson.”

“Perhaps he only did it to keep the talk going, and to give the old man a chance to say something,” March leniently suggested.  “It was a worse effect because he didn’t or couldn’t follow up Fulkerson’s lead.”