When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that young woman to shriek with amazement.
"Anita!" she exclaimed. "You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you cry?"
It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She turned upon the tactless intruder.
"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were worth forty dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly believed you were poor and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care of you, to slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you do?"
"What would you do?" demanded Anita Flagg. "This is what you'd do: You'd go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me--and love me--and love me!"
"Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita Flagg. "Because I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?"
At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward, in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing Sam's story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the office. "In the name of Mike!" he shouted. "What IS this?"
The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table, was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He came back to earth.