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 the sickness. If Clayton had reproached him, or cut him, it would have made it easier; but Clayton did none of these things, and Kittrell was irresistibly drawn to the subject himself.

"You heard of my—new job?" he asked.

"Yes," said Clayton, "I heard."

"Well—" Kittrell began.

"I'm sorry," Clayton said.

"So was I," Kittrell hastened to say. "But I felt it—well, a duty, some way—to Edith. You know—we—need the money." And he gave the cynical laugh that went with the argument.

"What does she think? Does she feel that way about it?"

Kittrell laughed, not cynically now, but uneasily and with embarrassment, for Clayton's blue eyes were on him, those eyes that could look into men and understand them so.

"Of course you know," Kittrell went on nervously, "there is nothing personal in this. We news-*paper fellows simply do what we are told; we obey orders like soldiers, you know. With the policy of the paper we have nothing to do. Just like Dick Jennings, who was a red-hot free-trader and used to