f
the shelves. He watched the man do this with a concentrated interest
as though the dull, numbed feeling in his brain caught at the trifle in
order to put off, as long as possible, the consideration of the truth.

And then beyond the sideboard and the tapestry on the wall above it, he
saw the sun shining down upon the island of Cuba, he saw the royal palms
waving and bending, the dusty columns of Spanish infantry crawling along
the white roads and leaving blazing huts and smoking cane-fields in
their wake; he saw skeletons of men and women seeking for food among the
refuse of the street; he heard the order given to the firing squad, the
splash of the bullets as they scattered the plaster on the prison wall,
and he saw a kneeling figure pitch forward on its face, with a useless
bandage tied across its sightless eyes.

Senator Stanton brought him back with a sharp shake of the shoulder. He
had also turned his back on the others, and was leaning forward with
his elbows on his knees. He spoke rapidly, and in a voice only slightly
raised above a whisper.

"I am more than sorry, Arkwright," he said earnestly. "You mustn't blame
me altogether. I have had a hard time of it this afternoon. I wanted to
go. I really wanted to go. The thing appealed to me, it touched me, it
seemed as if I owed it to myself to do it. But they were too many for
me," he added with a backward toss of his head toward the men around his
table.

"If the papers had not told on me I could have got well away," he went
on in an eager tone, "but as soon as they read of it, they came here
straight from their offices. You know who they are, don't you?"
he asked, and even in his earnestness there was an added touch of
importance in his tone as he spoke the name of his party's leader, of
men who stood prominently in Wall Street and who were at the head of
great trusts.

"You see how it is," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "They have
enormous interests at stake. They said I would drag them into war, that
I would disturb values, that the business interests of the country would
suffer. I'm under obligations to most of them, they have advised me
in financial matters, and they threatened--they threatened to make
it unpleasant for me." His voice hardened and he drew in his breath
quickly, and laughed. "You wouldn't understand if I were to tell you.
It's rather involved. And after all, they may be right, agitation may
be bad for the country. And your party