understand, sir, that I tolerate----"

"Oh, quit it!" cried a voice from the group. "You can't scare us,
Derrick. That sort of talk was well enough once, but it don't go any
more. We want a yes or no answer."

It was gone--that old-time power of mastery, that faculty of command.
The ground crumbled beneath his feet. Long since it had been, by his own
hand, undermined. Authority was gone. Why keep up this miserable sham
any longer? Could they not read the lie in his face, in his voice? What
a folly to maintain the wretched pretence! He had failed. He was ruined.
Harran was gone. His ranch would soon go; his money was gone. Lyman
was worse than dead. His own honour had been prostituted. Gone, gone,
everything he held dear, gone, lost, and swept away in that fierce
struggle. And suddenly and all in a moment the last remaining shells
of the fabric of his being, the sham that had stood already wonderfully
long, cracked and collapsed.

"Was the Commission honestly elected?" insisted Garnett. "Were the
delegates--did you bribe the delegates?"

"We were obliged to shut our eyes to means," faltered Magnus. "There
was no other way to--" Then suddenly and with the last dregs of his
resolution, he concluded with: "Yes, I gave them two thousand dollars
each."

"Oh, hell! Oh, my God!" exclaimed Keast, sitting swiftly down upon the
ragged sofa.

There was a long silence. A sense of poignant embarrassment descended
upon those present. No one knew what to say or where to look. Garnett,
with a laboured attempt at nonchalance, murmured:

"I see. Well, that's what I was trying to get at. Yes, I see."

"Well," said Gethings at length, bestirring himself, "I guess I'LL go
home."

There was a movement. The group broke up, the men making for the door.
One by one they went out. The last to go was Keast. He came up to Magnus
and shook the Governor's limp hand.

"Good-bye, Governor," he said. "I'll see you again pretty soon. Don't
let this discourage you. They'll come around all right after a while. So
long."

He went out, shutting the door.

And seated in the one chair of the room, Magnus Derrick remained a long
time, looking at his face in the cracked mirror that for so many years
had reflected the painted faces of soubrettes, in this atmosphere of
stale perfume and mouldy rice powder.

It had come--his fall, his ruin. After so many years of integrity and
honest battle, his life had ended here--in an actress's dressing-room,
d