Ideas, not very favourable to his character as a journalist, were
in the air. And as his mind (in this respect constitutionally
susceptible) had seldom been able to resist ideas in the air there
were moments when his own judgment wavered. He was beginning to
suspect himself.
He was not sure, and if he had been he would not have acted on that
certainty; for he had never possessed the courage of his opinions. But
it had come to this, that Jewdwine, the pure, the incorruptible, was
actually uncertain whether he had or had not taken a bribe. As he lay
awake in bed at four o'clock in the morning his conscience would
suggest to him that he had done this thing; but at noon, in the office
of _Metropolis_, his robust common sense, then like the sun, in the
ascendant, boldly protested that he had done nothing of the sort. He
had merely made certain not very unusual concessions to the interests
of his journal. In doing so he had of course set aside his artistic
conscience, an artistic conscience being a private luxury incompatible
with the workings of a large corporate concern. He was bound to
disregard it in loyalty to his employers and his public. They expected
certain things of him and not others. It was different in the
unexciting days of the old _Museion_; it would be different now if he
could afford to run a paper of his own dedicated to the service of
the Absolute. But Jewdwine was no longer the servant of the Absolute.
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