big and manly, and he had rapidly become so self-poised, that they did
not realize that in experience he was only a boy, with the ingenuous
faith and simple aims and candor of boyhood. He perceived what he might
win. But the pride of serving General Waymouth loyally was worth more to
him than anything they could offer.

His duties took him often to the State capital. The chairman of the
State Committee was coolly courteous, often gloomily deferential,
sometimes frankly cordial--uneasily trying to find the proper level to
stand on in his intercourse with one who was the grandson of Thelismer
Thornton, and also the chosen confidant of the man who had wrested from
him control of State affairs.

In the case of Madeleine Presson, there was none of this embarrassment.
He saw her often. She met him half-way with a frank interest in his work
and a sympathy which, in those days of truce, did not question his
ideals.

He became a welcome intimate of the Presson household. When he was there
the master himself put aside all the brusqueness he displayed in their
down-town discourse on politics. The girl welcomed him. There were many
hours when they were alone together, in the home or on long drives into
the country. She did not refer to their talk on that evening when she
read to him his lesson on practical politics. He avoided that subject.
He did not want to risk any further disagreement between them on the
matter of ideals--or, for that matter, on any other subject. Association
with her had become too delightful to be put to the test of discussions
of political methods. He was still drawing upon her fund of worldly
wisdom. There was a little touch of the cynic in her. He became secretly
ashamed of some of his ingenuous beliefs, after she had deftly shown him
the other side of things. She did show him the other side, quite in a
matter-of-fact way. It was not that she was trying to break down his
faith. There was nothing sly nor crafty in her methods of improving his
views. But by informing him, she made him wiser, and, at the same time,
more distrustful of motives, more searching in his investigations of
methods. He began to doubt some of his earlier ideas of what a public
man should be. He felt that his views were broadening. That was a
comfortable way of excusing certain surrenderings to her ideas.

The more he drew from her the more he was drawn to her.

It was not the love that comes with a rush of the emotions and sweeps