heum to know that Henry's
quota, which under normal conditions would require only diligence, and
initiative, and originality to reach, would be literally impossible if
Sundays were taken from the schedule. The League's blue-law campaign,
if it proved successful, would make Henry Devereux even bluer than Mr.
Mix. "Three rousing cheers for reform!" said Mr. Mix, and grinned at
the pamphlet.

Another brilliant thought infected him. He had long since passed the
stage in which women were a mystery to him: he had long since realized
that unless a man's passions intervene, there is nothing more
mysterious about women than about men. It was all humbug--all this
mummery about intuitions and unerring perception and inscrutability.
Women are all alike--all human--all susceptible to sheer, blatant
flattery. The only difference in women is in the particular brand of
flattery to which, as individuals, they react.

Take Miss Starkweather: he had seen that if he fed her vanity
unsparingly--not her physical vanity, but her pride in her own soul,
and in her League presidency--she blazed up into a flame which
consumed even her purpose in causing the interview. Once already, by
no remarkable effort, he had been able to divert her attention; and it
was now imperative for him to keep it diverted until he had raised
five thousand dollars. And if she were so susceptible, why shouldn't
Mr. Mix venture a trifle further? He knew that she regarded him as an
important man; why shouldn't he let himself be won over, slowly and by
her influence alone, to higher things? Stopping, of course, just short
of actually becoming a League partisan? Why shouldn't he feed her fat
with ethics and adulation, until she were more anxious for his
cooperation than for his money? If he couldn't play hide-and-seek for
six months,--if he couldn't turn her head so far that she couldn't
bear to press him for payment--he wasn't the strategist he believed
himself to be. But in the meantime, where was he to get the money to
live on? Still, Mirabelle came first.

On Sunday, he fortified himself from his meagre supply of contraband,
ate two large cloves, and went formally to call on her. He remained an
hour, and by exercise of the most finished diplomacy, he succeeded in
building up the situation exactly as he had planned it. The note
hadn't been mentioned; the League hadn't been given a breathing-space;
and Mirabelle was pleading with him to see the light, and join the
cru