w, relieved to
find that the sun had scattered my morbid fancies with the darkness; and
I speculated, as I dressed, whether the thing called conscience were not,
after all, a matter of nerves. I went downstairs through the
tobacco-stale atmosphere of the lobby into the fresh air and sparkly
sunlight of the mild February morning, and leaving the business district
I reached the residence portion of the little town. The front steps of
some of the comfortable houses were being swept by industrious servant
girls, and out of the chimneys twisted, fantastically, rich blue smoke;
the bare branches of the trees were silver-grey against the sky; gaining
at last an old-fashioned, wooden bridge, I stood for awhile gazing at the
river, over the shallows of which the spendthrift hand of nature had
flung a shower of diamonds. And I reflected that the world was for the
strong, for him who dared reach out his hand and take what it offered. It
was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power, the self-expression
conferred by power. A single experience such as I had had the night
before would since to convince any sane man that democracy was a failure,
that the world-old principle of aristocracy would assert itself, that the
attempt of our ancestors to curtail political power had merely resulted
in the growth of another and greater economic power that bade fair to be
limitless. As I walked slowly back into town I felt a reluctance to
return to the noisy hotel, and finding myself in front of a little
restaurant on a side street, I entered it. There was but one other
customer in the place, and he was seated on the far side of the counter,
with a newspaper in front of him; and while I was ordering my breakfast I
was vaguely aware that the newspaper had dropped, and that he was looking
at me. In the slight interval that elapsed before my brain could register
his identity I experienced a distinct shock of resentment; a sense of the
reintrusion of an antagonistic value at a moment when it was most
unwelcome....

The man had risen and was coming around the counter. He was Hermann
Krebs.

"Paret!" I heard him say.

"You here?" I exclaimed.

He did not seem to notice the lack of cordiality in my tone. He appeared
so genuinely glad to see me again that I instantly became rather ashamed
of my ill nature.

"Yes, I'm here--in the legislature," he informed me.

"A Solon!"

"Exactly." He smiled. "And you?" he inquired.

"Oh, I'm only a spect