"And what a radical you'll be," she laughed, after a moment's silence.
"What a radical, what a democrat!"
"When?" He was flushing a little and avoided her eyes.
"When you're free--really the proprietor--able to express your own views,
all your own views. We shall become outcasts."
"I wonder," he replied slowly, "does a rich man own his property or does it
own him?"
For an instant he had an impulse of his old longing for sympathy, for
companionship. She was now thirty-six and, save for an expression of
experience, of self-control, seemed hardly so much as thirty. But with the
years, with the habit of self-restraint, with instinctive rather than
conscious realisation of his indifference toward her, had come a chill
perceptible at the surface and permeating her entire character. In her own
way she had become as self-absorbed, as ambitious as he.
He looked at her, felt this chill, sighed, smiled at himself. Yes, he was
alone--and he preferred to be alone.
XXVII.
THE HARVEST.
Through all his scheming and shifting Howard had kept the
_News-Record_ in the main an "organ of the people." Coulter and
Stokely had on many occasions tried to persuade him to change, but he had
stood out. He did not confess to them that his real reason was not his
alleged principles but his cold judgment that the increases in circulation
which produced increases in advertising patronage were dependent upon the
paper's reputation of fearless democracy.
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