"Isn't it superb?" she
asked at the end. "You must have written it for him. Don't you like it?"
"Very able," was Howard's only comment.
Marian continued to read the paper, glancing from column to column, giving
him the substance of the news. Soon she reached the editorial page. He was
stealthily watching her face. He saw her glance through a few lines of the
leader, start, read on, look in a terrified way at him, and then skip
abruptly to the next page.
"Read me the leader, won't you?" he asked.
"My voice is tired," she pleaded. "I'll read it after awhile."
"Please," he insisted. "I'm especially anxious to hear it."
"I think," she almost stammered, "that somebody has taken advantage of your
illness. I didn't want to tell you until I'd had a chance to think."
"Please read it." His tone was abrupt. She had never heard that tone
before.
She read. It was an assertion of that which her Howard most disbelieved,
most protested against; a defense of the public corruption she had heard
him denounce so often; an attack upon the ideas, the principles, the
elements she had so often heard him eulogize. It was as adroit as it was
detestable, as plausible as it was unprincipled.
When she had done, there was a long silence which he broke.
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