Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/173

Rh "Rather," Lady Grace wondered, "than have put him off?"

"It will have put him prodigiously on! Mr. Bender—as he said to me at Dedborough of his noble host there," Hugh pursued—"is 'a very nice man'; but he's a product of the world of advertisement, and advertisement is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish in water."

She took it from him as half doubting. "But mayn't advertisement, in so special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?"

Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught from foreign comrades. "He rides the biggest whirlwind—he has got it saddled and bitted."

She faced the image, but cast about. "Then where does our success come in?"

"In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him." And Hugh further pointed the moral. "If in such proceedings all he knows is publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it's only a question of giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself, you see, he'll have too much for every one else—so that we shall 'up' in a body and slay him."