left; now he wanted to be
loved, if by a dog.

He raised his head and smiled upon the bronze Washington and the
sad-coloured sky. In the drive below men were passing, and from time to
time he recognised a figure. He saw only men down there, and the thought
came to him that his was a man's world--only in the outside circle might
he catch the flutter of a woman's dress. He turned and went back to his
desk and his work.

Two days later the papers chronicled without comment his opposition to
Rann's bill. He was aware that Rann possessed no uncertain influence
with the editors of the "Morning Standard," and he was surprised at the
apparent indifference displayed by the curt announcement. Did Rann's
resentment hang fire? Or was the press prepared to uphold the governor?

On the morning of the same day a member of the legislature with whom he
was slightly acquainted came in to congratulate him upon his stand. His
name was Saunders, and he was a man of some ability, whom Nicholas had
always regarded as a partisan of Webb.

"I've been fighting that bill this whole session," he said emphatically,
"and I'd given up all hope of defeating it when you had the pluck to
knock it over. You've made enemies, Governor, but you've made friends,
and I'm one of them. Give me the man who dares!" He held out his hand as
he rose, and Nicholas responded with a hearty grip. Before the
legislature closed he found that Saunders spoke the truth--he had made
friends as well as enemies. The inborn Anglo-Saxon love of "the man who
dares" was with him--a regard for daring for its own heroic sake. The
hour was his, and he braved his shifting popularity as he would brave
its final outcome.

II

One afternoon in early May, Dudley Webb came out upon his front steps
and paused to light a cigar before descending to the street. A spring of
happy promise was unfolding, for overhead the poplars bloomed against an
enchanted sky. In the shadow of the church across the way, children were
romping, their ecstatic trebles floating like bird-song on the air.

With the cigar between his teeth, Dudley heaved a sudden reminiscent
sigh--the sigh of a man who possesses an excellent digestion and a
complacent conscience. Things had gone well with him of late--the fact
that a trivial domestic interest darkened for the moment his serene
horizon proved it to be the solitary cloud of a clear day. The cloud in
question had gathered in the shape of no less a person