hung it up again, took it down, announced
over the 'phone that he could not see any one for several hours, and
went out by a private door. Wearily he walked along North Clark
Street, looking at the hurly-burly of traffic, looking at the dirty,
crowded river, looking at the sky and smoke and gray buildings, and
wondering what he should do. The world was so hard at times; it was so
cruel. His wife, his family, his political career. He could not
conscientiously sign any ordinances for Mr. Cowperwood--that would be
immoral, dishonest, a scandal to the city. Mr. Cowperwood was a
notorious traitor to the public welfare. At the same time he could not
very well refuse, for here was Mrs. Brandon, the charming and
unscrupulous creature, playing into the hands of Cowperwood. If he
could only meet her, beg of her, plead; but where was she? He had not
seen her for months and months. Could he go to Hand and confess all?
But Hand was a hard, cold, moral man also. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! He
wondered and thought, and sighed and pondered--all without avail.

Pity the poor earthling caught in the toils of the moral law. In
another country, perhaps, in another day, another age, such a situation
would have been capable of a solution, one not utterly destructive to
Mr. Sluss, and not entirely favorable to a man like Cowperwood. But
here in the United States, here in Chicago, the ethical verities would
all, as he knew, be lined up against him. What Lake View would think,
what his pastor would think, what Hand and all his moral associates
would think--ah, these were the terrible, the incontrovertible
consequences of his lapse from virtue.

At four o'clock, after Mr. Sluss had wandered for hours in the snow and
cold, belaboring himself for a fool and a knave, and while Cowperwood
was sitting at his desk signing papers, contemplating a glowing fire,
and wondering whether the mayor would deem it advisable to put in an
appearance, his office door opened and one of his trim stenographers
entered announcing Mr. Chaffee Thayer Sluss. Enter Mayor Sluss, sad,
heavy, subdued, shrunken, a very different gentleman from the one who
had talked so cavalierly over the wires some five and a half hours
before. Gray weather, severe cold, and much contemplation of seemingly
irreconcilable facts had reduced his spirits greatly. He was a little
pale and a little restless. Mental distress has a reducing, congealing
effect, and Mayor Sluss seemed somewhat