those who
should be near and dear to you. And you have sneered at the people who
send you here to represent them; you have betrayed them, not once but a
hundred times; and you know it hasn't paid. You are the unhappiest man
in the world. But there's a real power in you, or you could never have
done the things you have done--the mean and vile things. You have brains
and a genius for organizing and managing men. You could never have
lasted so long without the personal qualities that a man must have to
lead men. And you have led them, down and down."

To all appearances she had spoken to dull ears. Occasionally their eyes
had met, but his gaze had wandered away to range the walls. When she
ceased he moved restlessly about the room.

"You think I am as bad as that?" he asked, pausing by the table and
looking down at her.

"You are as bad--and as good--as that," she replied, the hope that
stirred in her heart lighting her face.

He shrugged his shoulders and sat down.

"You have the wit to see that the old order of things is passing; the
old apparatus you have learned to operate with a turn of the hand is out
of date. Now is your chance to leave the shadow life and begin again.
It's not too late to win the confidence--the gratitude even--of the
people who now distrust and fear you. The day of reckoning is coming
fast for men like you, who have made a mystery of politics, playing it
as a game in the dark. I don't pretend to know much of these things, but
I can see that men of your type are passing out; there would be no great
glory for you in waiting to be the last to go. And there are things
enough for you to do. If you ally yourself with the good causes that cry
for support and leadership, you can be far more formidable than you have
ever been as a skulking trickster; you can lead men up as you have led
them down."

"The change is coming; I have seen it coming," he replied, catching at
the one thing it seemed safest to approve.

But she was not to be thwarted by his acquiescence in generalities. He
saw that she had brought him back to a point whence he must elect his
course, but he did not flinch at the flat restatement of her demand.

"You have done nothing to deserve the senatorship; you are not the
choice of the people of this state. You must relinquish it; you must
give it up!"

The earnestness with which she uttered her last words seemed, to her
surprise, to amuse him.

"You think," he said, "that I shoul