. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling
and mouthing! In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced
the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and
not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in
the hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself
the head, not of the nation--there would be no nation, as such--but of
the country. The very incidents of the night before, blundering as they
were, showed him the ease with which the new force could be applied.

He was drunk with power.

CHAPTER XXVII

Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon, in the person of Pink
Denslow. She had assumed some of Elinor's cares for the day, for Elinor
herself had not been visible since breakfast. It soothed the girl to
attend to small duties, and she was washing and wiping Elinor's small
stock of fine china when the bell rang.

"Mr. Denslow is calling," said Jennie. "I didn't know if you'd see him,
so I said I didn't know if you were in."

Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him. He was
covered with plaster dust, even to the brim of his hat, and his hands
were scratched and rough.

"Pink!" she said. "Why, what is the matter?"

For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the first
time in his life perhaps, entirely indifferent to it.

"I've been digging in the ruins," he said. "Is that man Doyle in the
house?"

Her color faded. Suddenly she noticed a certain wildness about Pink's
eyes, and the hard strained look of his mouth.

"What ruins, Pink?" she managed to ask.

"All the ruins," he said. "You know, don't you? The bank, our bank, and
the club?"

It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw it
all, a dreadful picture which had somehow superimposed upon it a vision
of Jim Doyle with the morning paper, and the thing that this was not the
time for.

"That's all," he finished. "Eleven at the club, two of them my own
fellows. In France, you know. I found one of them myself, this morning."
He stared past her, over her head. "Killed for nothing, the way the
Germans terrorized Belgium. Haven't you seen the papers?"

"No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course. Lily, I want you to
leave here. If you don't, if you stay now, you're one of them, whether
you believe what they preach or not. Don't you see that?"

She was not listening. Her faith was dying hard, and