king her head determinedly. "I can't help you this time,
Evan; truly I can't." Then, in sudden appeal: "Why won't you go to your
father? He could tell you what to do and how to do it, and his judgment
would be too big and just to stumble over the tangling little
moralities."

Blount smiled.

"What if I should tell you that my father is more or less involved,
Patricia? I don't know precisely how much or how little, but I am
assured, by those who claim to know, that he, too, would go down in the
general wreck."

"I can't believe it!" she protested, in generous loyalty. "These people,
whoever they are, are deceiving you to shelter themselves. Have you ever
spoken to your father about this?"

"Yes, once; one evening when we were dining together I told him what I
had, and what use I should make of it if all other means should fail.
Also, I advised him to dodge."

"What did he say?"

"That is the discouraging part of it. I was hoping against hope that he
would tell me to go ahead; that he would say that he wasn't involved.
But, as a matter of fact, he didn't say much of anything. I'm horribly
afraid that his silence meant all that I've been trying to believe it
didn't mean."

She was slowly opening and closing her fan, as if she were trying to
gain time.

"I can only tell you again what I told you at first," she said at
length. "You must be bigger than all these hampering circumstances;
bigger than the little moralities, if need be. You can be, Evan; you've
given splendid proof of it thus far, and I'm proud--just as proud as I
can be--"

Blount felt as if he could, joyously and entirely without scruple, have
brained young Gordon, to whom the next dance belonged, and who came just
at this climaxing moment to claim Patricia. But there was no help for
it, short of a cold-blooded and rather embarrassing deed of violence,
and the hard-won confidence ended pretty much where it had begun.

When he left the Gordon house, which was far out in the northeastern
residence suburb, Blount meant to go directly to the hotel and to bed.
He had been losing much sleep in the activities of the campaign, and the
loss was beginning to tell upon him. But as the trolley-car was passing
the Temple Court Building he made sure that he saw a dim light
illuminating the windows of his upper-floor office. With all his
suspicions of the morning reawakened, he dropped from the car, dashed
into the building, and took the all-night elevator for h