fire. "It may be failure,
but it is magnificent," she said.

He was smiling down on her from his great height; and while she stood
there in that clear golden air, she felt again, as she had felt twice
before when she was with him, that beneath the depth of her personal
life, in that buried consciousness which belonged to the ages of being,
something more real than any actual experience she had ever known was
responding to the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice. All that
she had missed in life--completeness, perfection--seemed to shine about
her for an instant before it passed on into the sunlight. A fancy,
nothing more! A fading gleam of some lost wildness of youth! For if she
had spoken the thought in her mind while she stood there, she would have
said, "Give me what I have never had. Make me what I have never been."
But she did not speak it; the serene friendliness of her look did not
alter; and the impulse vanished as swiftly as the shadow of a bird in
flight.

"I thank you," he answered in a low voice. "I shall remember that."

The moment had passed, and she held out her hand with a smile. "I shall
come to stay with Patty while you are at the meeting to-night," she
said; and then, as she turned away to the car, he walked beside her in
silence.

A little later, when she looked back from the gate, she saw him standing
in the bright grass with the sunrise above his head.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH

That evening, when Corinna got out of her car before the Governor's
house, Stephen Culpeper opened the door, and came down the steps.

"I waited for you," he said; and then as the car moved away, he took her
hand and turned back to the porch.

"I couldn't come before," explained Corinna. "I had a headache all day,
and it kept me in bed. Have you seen Patty?"

"I have seen her, but that is all. I can do nothing with her."

"But she cares for you."

"She doesn't deny it. That's not the trouble. Something about Vetch
stands in the way. I can't make out what she means."

"Let me talk to her," responded Corinna reassuringly. "Is the Governor
here?"

"No, he has gone to the strikers' meeting. They must reach some decision
to-night it appears. I have talked with him, and I believe he will stand
firm whatever happens. It means, I think, that his career is over."

"It is too late for him to win over the conservative forces?"

"It was always too late. In a battle of extremes the mo