to hear
you say them."

He tried to look at her. He found that his eyes were more comfortable
when his glance was elsewhere.

"This has been a sad campaign to me," he went on. "I did not
appreciate before what demagogery meant--how dangerous it is--how
wicked, how criminally wicked it is for men to stir up the lower
classes against the educated leadership of the community."

Selma laughed contemptuously. "What nonsense, David Hull--and from
YOU!" she cried. "By educated leadership do you mean the traction and
gas and water and coal and iron and produce thieves? Or do you mean the
officials and the judges who protect them and license them to rob?"
Her eyes flashed. "At this very moment, in our town, those thieves and
their agents, the police and the courts, are committing the most
frightful crime known to a free people. Yet the masses are submitting
peaceably. How long the upper class has to indulge in violence, and
how savagely cruel it has to be, before the people even murmur. But I
didn't come here to remind you of what you already know. I came to ask
you, as a man whom I have respected, to assert his manhood--if there is
any of it left after this campaign of falsehood and shifting."

"Selma!" he protested energetically, but still avoiding her eyes.

"Those wretches are stealing that election for you, David Hull. Are you
going to stand for it? Or, will you go into town and force Kelly to
stop?"

"If anything wrong is being done by Kelly," said David, "it must be for
Sawyer."

Selma rose. "At our consultation," said she quietly and even with no
suggestion of repressed emotion, "they debated coming to you and laying
the facts before you. They decided against it. They were right; I was
wrong. I pity you, David Hull. Good-by."

She walked away. He hesitated, observing her. His eyes lighted up
with the passion he believed his good sense had conquered. "Selma,
don't misjudge me!" he cried, following her. "I am not the scoundrel
they're making you believe me. I love you!"

She wheeled upon him so fiercely that he started back. "How dare you!"
she said, her voice choking with anger. "You miserable fraud! You
bellwether for the plutocracy, to lead reform movements off on a false
scent, off into the marshes where they'll be suffocated." She looked
at him from head to foot with a withering glance. "No doubt, you'll
have what's called a successful career. You'll be their traitor leader
for the