Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/401

THE PAPERS "Before"—Marshal met it—"the interest has subsided. It naturally then wouldn't—would it?—subside!"

"No," Bight granted; "not if it hadn't, through wearing out—I mean your being lost too long—already died out."

"Oh, of course," his guest agreed, "you mustn't be lost too long." A vista had plainly opened to him, and the subject led him on. He had, before its extent, another pause. "About how long, do you think?"

Well, Bight had to think. "I should say Beadel had rather overdone it."

The poor gentleman stared. "But if he can't help himself?"

Bight gave a laugh. "Yes; but in case he could."

Maud again intervened, and, as her question was for their host, Marshal was all attention. "Do you consider Beadel has overdone it?"

Well, once more, it took consideration. The issue of Bight's, however, was not of the clearest. "I don't think we can tell unless he were to. I don't think that, without seeing it, and judging by the special case, one can quite know how it would be taken. He might, on the one side, have spoiled, so to speak, his market; and he might, on the other, have scored as never before."

"It might be," Maud threw in, "just the making of him."

"Surely"—Marshal glowed—"there's just that chance."

"What a pity then," Bight laughed, "that there isn't some one to take it! For the light it would throw, I mean, on the laws—so mysterious, so curious, so interesting—that govern the great currents of public attention. They're not wholly whimsical—wayward and wild; they have their strange logic, their obscure reason—if one could only get at it! The man who does, 389