He could make nothing of them. They brushed his face,
he felt their influence, yet he could place his finger on no
tangible and comprehensible solidity. Among these delicate and
complicated cross-currents Newmark moved silent, cold, secret. He
seemed to understand them, to play with them, to manipulate them as
elements of the game. Above them was the hollow shock of the
ostensible battle--the speeches, the loud talk in lobbies, the
newspaper virtue, indignation, accusations; but the real struggle
was here in the furtive ways, in whispered words delivered hastily
aside, in hotel halls on the way to and from the stairs, behind
closed doors of rooms without open transoms.
Orde in comic despair acknowledged that it was all "too deep for
him." Nevertheless, it was soon borne in on him that the new
company was struggling for its very right to existence. It had been
doing that from the first; but now, to Orde the fight, the
existence, had a new importance. The company up to this point had
been a scheme merely, an experiment that might win or lose. Now,
with the history of a drive behind it, it had become a living
entity. Orde would have fought against its dissolution as he would
have fought against a murder.
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