tor out and locked the door after him.

Then he returned to the drawing room. Holding his head between his hands
he walked slowly up and down the floor--up and down the floor--up and
down--many times.

"This is weakness," he muttered, "to be thinking of myself when I should
think only of her and the long life before her, which might be so joyous
but for me--but for me! Dear one who, in her tender childhood, pitied
the orphan boy, and with patient, painstaking earnestness taught him to
read and write, and gave him the first impulse and inspiration to a
higher life. And now she would give her life to me. And for all the good
she has done me all her days, for all the blessings she has brought me,
shall I blight her happiness? Shall I make her this black return? No,
no. Better that I should pass forever out of her life--pass forever out
of sight--forever out of this world--than live to make her suffer. Make
her suffer? I? Oh, no! Let fame, life, honors, all go down, so that she
is saved--so that she is made happy."

He paused in his walk and listened. All the house was profoundly
still--all the household evidently asleep--except her! He felt sure that
she was sleepless. Oh, that he could go and comfort her! even as a
mother comforts her child; but he could not.

"I suppose many would say," he murmured to himself, "that I owe my first
earthly duty to the people who have called me to this high office; that
private sorrows and private conscience should yield to the public, and
they would be right. Yet with me it is as if death had stepped in and
relieved me of official duty to be taken up by my successor just the
same--"

He stopped and put his hand to his head, murmuring:

"Is this special pleading? I wonder if I am quite sane?"

Then dropping into a chair he covered his face with his hands and wept
aloud.

Does any one charge him with weakness? Think of the tragedy of a whole
life compressed in that one crucial hour!

After a little while he grew more composed. The tears had relieved the
overladen heart. He arose and recommenced his walk, reflecting with more
calmness on the cruel situation.

"I shall right her wrongs in the only possible way in which it can be
done, and I shall do no harm to the State. Kennedy will be a better
governor than I could have been. He is an older, wiser, more experienced
statesman. I am conscious that I have been over-rated by the people who
love me. I was elected for my popularity, n