tly.

"Haven't I just been showing you that I am not?"

"You have been showing me that you can not always out-plan, the other
person. That is a lack, but it is not fatal. Are you great enough to run
fast and far when it is a straight-away race depending only upon mere
man-strength and indomitable determination?"

Her words fired him curiously. He recalled the little thrill of
inspiration which a somewhat similar appeal from Elinor had once given
him, and tried to compare the two sensations. There was no comparison. The
one was a call to moral victory; the other to material success. None the
less, he decided that the present was the more potent spell, perhaps only
because it was the present.

"Try me," he said impulsively.

"If I do ... David, no man can serve two masters--or two mistresses. If I
do, will you agree to put the sentimental affair resolutely in the
background?"

He took his head in his hands and was a long minute making up his mind.
But his refusal was blunt enough when it came.

"No; at least, not until they are married."

It would have taken a keener discernment than Kent's or any man's to have
fathomed the prompting of her laugh.

"I was only trying you," she said. "Perhaps, if you had said yes I should
have deserted you and gone over to the other side."

He got up and went to sit beside her on the pillowed divan.

"Don't try me again, please--not that way. I am only a man."

"I make no promises--not even good ones," she retorted. And then: "Would
you like to have your _quo warranto_ blind alley turned into a
thoroughfare?"

"I believe you can do it if you try," he admitted, brightening a little.

"Maybe I can; or rather maybe I can put you in the way of doing it. You
say Mr. Meigs is obstinate, and the governor is likely to prove still more
obstinate. Have you thought of any way of softening them?"

"You know I haven't. It's a stark impossibility from my point of view."

"Nothing is impossible; it is always a question of ways and means." Then,
suddenly: "Have you been paying any attention to the development of the
Belmount oil field?"

"Enough to know that it is a big thing; the biggest since the Pennsylvania
discoveries, according to all accounts."

"And the people of the State are enthusiastic about it, thinking that now
the long tyranny of the oil monopoly will be broken?"

"That is the way most of the newspapers talk, and there seems to be some
little ground for it, granting t