"That's a
vigorous arm of yours, Mr. Dominick."

"Not bad for a man of sixty," said Dominick.

I ate because to eat was a necessary part of my pose of absolute
calmness; but I had to force down the food. It seemed to me to embody
the banquet there set before my mental appetite. I found I had no
stomach for that banquet. It takes the coarse palate of youth or the
depraved palate of a more debauched manhood than mine to enjoy such a
feast. Yet, less than a year before, I had enjoyed, had delighted in, a
far less strenuous contest with these mutineers. As I sat holding down
my gorge and acting as if I were at ease, I suddenly wondered what
Elizabeth Crosby would think of me if she could see. And then I saw her,
with a reality of imagining that startled me--it was as if she were in
the doorway; and her eyes lifted to mine in that slow, steady, searching
gaze of hers.

I suppose, if a soldier thrusting his saber into the bowels of his enemy
on the battle-field were suddenly to see before him his mother or the
good and gentle wife or daughter he loved, he would drop the saber and
fly to hide himself like a murderer. So, I, overwhelmed, said to myself:
"I can not go on! Let these wretches wallow in their own vileness. I
shall not wallow with them. I am no swineherd!"

As I was debating how to escape and what one of the many other ways of
saving my friends and lieutenants I should adopt, Dominick touched me on
the arm. "A word with you, Senator," said he.

He glanced at the others as if he were debating whether he should order
them from the table while he talked with me. If he had ordered it, they
would have gone. But restrained, perhaps by his crude though reverent
sense of convention, he rose and led the way over to a corner.

"I want to tell you, Senator, that as soon as I got on to what this here
push was plottin', I wired you askin' an appointment. You'll find the
telegram at your house when you go home. I don't stand for no foulin'. I
play the game straight. I came because I thought you'd want the party to
be represented at such a getherin'."

I saw that he had come to the dinner, doubtful whether any enterprise
against me, promising enough for him to risk embarking, could be
launched; as soon as I entered the room he, like the rat when the cat
interrupted the rat-and-mouse convention to discuss belling it,
unceremoniously led the way to safety. But this was not one of those few
occasions on which it is wise to sh