She locked up the office and went out. But she did not turn to the hotel. She knew she would not get to sleep for some time. She walked a little way beyond the station and sat down in a clump of rushes near the river bank.
The two weeks that she and Dane had worked together on the News had been illuminating for both of them. She had seen at once after their first evening of kissing each other that neither of them could go on like that and do the work. She had been unable to sleep without a big dose of aspirin, and she had felt utterly demoralized the next day. In sheer self-defence she put it to Dane the first chance she had, and told him that their emotions must wait. She had expected opposition, but she was surprised to discover that he kept the contract much more faithfully than she did.
Dane had told Roger that in addition to the leaders and articles he would help Valerie in the office on publishing days, and that he would get out circulars and other literary ammunition. He astonished Roger and the committee with ideas. He began to write leaders that had a fire and appeal no other journalist in the country could equal. For he knew how to play upon the emotions of men, and he knew thoroughly the types with whom he had to deal. He had not talked and drunk and sung with these men for nothing.
And Valerie, thinking about him as she sat by the river, told herself that he had shown qualities in those two weeks that revealed him as a man absurdly misunderstood, and misunderstood, of course, because he himself had not the desire or the energy to care about it. She knew that more than anyone she had ever met he saw and appreciated exactly what she accomplished, mentally and spiritually and physically, in that daily rush; that every time she kept her temper against odds, that every time she set her-
