ation
from Nancy, was cumulative in character and effect, seeming actively to
reenforce the unwelcome conviction I had been striving to suppress, that
the world, which had long seemed so acquiescent in conforming itself to
my desires, was turning against me.

Though my hunger for Nancy was still gnawing, I had begun to fear that I
should never get her now; and the fact that she would not even write to
me seemed to confirm this.

Then there was Matthew--I could not bear to think that he would ever read
that article.

In vain I tried that night to belittle to myself its contentions and
probable results, to summon up the heart to fight; in vain I sought to
reconstruct the point of view, to gain something of that renewed hope and
power, of devotion to a cause I had carried away from Washington after my
talk with Theodore Watling. He, though stricken, had not wavered in his
faith. Why should I?

Whether or not as the result of the article in Yardley's, which had been
read more or less widely in the city, the campaign of the Citizens Union
gained ground, and people began to fill the little halls to hear Krebs,
who was a candidate for district attorney. Evidently he was entertaining
and rousing them, for his reputation spread, and some of the larger halls
were hired. Dickinson and Gorse became alarmed, and one morning the
banker turned up at the Club while I was eating my breakfast.

"Look here, Hugh," he said, "we may as well face the fact that we've got
a fight ahead of us,--we'll have to start some sort of a back-fire right
away."

"You think Greenhalge has a chance of being elected?" I asked.

"I'm not afraid of Greenhalge, but of this fellow Krebs. We can't afford
to have him district attorney, to let a demagogue like him get a start.
The men the Republicans and Democrats have nominated are worse than
useless. Parks is no good, and neither is MacGuire. If only we could have
foreseen this thing we might have had better candidates put up--but
there's no use crying over spilt milk. You'll have to go on the stump,
Hugh--that's all there is to it. You can answer him, and the newspapers
will print your speeches in full. Besides it will help you when it comes
to the senatorship."

The mood of extreme dejection that had followed the appearance of the
article in Yardley's did not last. I had acquired aggressiveness: an
aggressiveness, however, differing in quality from the feeling I once
would have had,--for this arose f