The assistant editor went on with his writing. He looked worn this
morning, Henry Surface's son, and not without reason. Half the night he
had shared the nurse's vigil at the bedside of Surface, who lay in
unbroken stupor. Half the night he had maintained an individual vigil in
his own room, lying flat on his back and staring wide-eyed into the
darkness. And on the heels of the day, there had come new trouble for
him, real trouble, though in the general cataclysm its full bearings and
farther reaches did not at once come home to him. Running professionally
through the _Post_ at breakfast-time, his eye, like Miss Weyland's, had
been suddenly riveted by that paper's remarks upon the reformatory....
What was the meaning of the staggering performance he had no idea, and
need not inquire. Its immediate effect upon his own career was at least
too plain for argument. His editorship and his reformatory had gone down
together.
Yet he was in no hurry now about following West into his sanctum. Of all
things Queed, as people called him, despised heroics and abhorred a
"scene." Nothing could be gained by a quarrel now; very earnestly he
desired the interview to be as matter-of-fact as possible.
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