be arranged."

"Oh no," said the President. "Don't trouble."

And he was politic--or politician--enough to avoid the subject
thenceforward. But he could not get Shelby out of his mind that night as
his car whizzed on its way. To be called crazy and eccentric and to be
suspected, feared, resisted by the very people he longed to
lead--Presidents are not unaware of that ache of unrequited affection.

The same evening Shelby and Phoebe Shelby looked out on their park.
The crowds that had used it as a vantage-ground for the pageant had all
vanished, leaving behind a litter of rubbish, firecrackers, cigar stubs,
broken shrubs, gouged terraces. Not one of them had asked permission,
had murmured an apology or a word of thanks.

For the first time Phoebe Shelby noted that her husband did not take
new determination from rebuff. His resolution no longer made a
springboard of resistance. He seemed to lean on her a little.

IV

The perennially empty cutlery-works gave the Wide-a-Wakefield Club no
rest. Year after year the anxiously awaited census renewed the old note
of fifteen thousand and denied the eloquent argument of increased
population. The committee in its letters continued to refer to
Wakefield as "thriving" rather than as "growing." Its ingeniously
evasive circulars finally roused a curiosity in Wilmer Barstow, a
manufacturer of refrigerators, dissatisfied with the taxes and freight
rates of the city of Clayton.

Barstow was the more willing to leave Clayton because he had suffered
there from that reward which is more unkind than the winter wind. He
loved a woman and paid court to her, sending her flowers at every
possible excuse and besetting her with gifts.

She was not much of a woman--her very lover could see that; but he loved
her in his own and her despite. She was unworthy of his jewels as of his
infatuation, yet she gave him no courtesy for his gifts. She behaved as
if they bored her; yet he knew no other way to win her. The more
indifference she showed the more he tried to dazzle her.

At last he found that she was paying court herself to a younger man--a
selfish good-for-naught who made fun of her as well as of Barstow, and
who borrowed money from her as well as from Barstow.

When Barstow fully realized that the woman had made him not only her own
booby, but the town joke as well, he could not endure her or the place
longer. He cast about for an escape. But he found his factory no
trifling baggage