Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/113

 But the girl, who had a nice look in her eyes, was sorry for him and would have liked him to know that she would always believe in him, no matter what happened, if that would help any.

He did know she believed in him; not because he was he, but because she was she. He wasn't sure that she ought to. That was what he meant to tell her. Besides it did not help him—in his work.

But he had the disquieting sense of being ridiculous, and the only thing to do at such times was to change the subject.

"I shall be talking earnestly about My Soul next, if I don't look out," he laughed to himself on the way down-town, "and Conscientious-ness and Self-abnega-tion, like a blamed self-conscious New Englander, and say 'After all, how lonely is each one's soul!' and things like that."

Then he ran up the stairs to the office. "Oh, well, I got the half-column out of the little lawyer, anyway," he said to himself.

Linton had been with the paper for a year now, and he had seen all sorts of things,