The haste displayed by Mayor Morrison in getting away from the study door suggested that he was glad to escape and was not fishing for any invitation to return for further parley.

But when he approached the head of the stairway he moved more slowly. His demeanor hinted that he would welcome some excuse, outside of politics, to keep him longer in the Corson mansion. He paused on the stairs and made an elaborate arrangement of a neck m.u.f.fler as if he expected to confront polar temperature outside. He pulled on his gloves, inspected them critically as if to a.s.sure himself that there were no crevices where the cold could enter. He looked over the banisters. There was n.o.body in the reception-hall. He arranged the m.u.f.fler some more. Step by step, very slowly, he descended as far as the landing where he had met Lana Corson joyously the night before. Not expectantly, with visage downcast, he looked behind him.

Lana was framed in the library door at the head of the stairs.

"I was trying to make up my mind to call to you. But you seemed to be in so much of a hurry! I suppose you have a great deal to attend to this morning."

"The princ.i.p.al rush seems to be over. Was it anything--Did you want to speak to me?"

"Perhaps it isn't of much importance. It did seem to be, for a moment. But it's something of a family matter. I think, after all, it will be imprudent to mention it."

He waited for her to go on.

"Probably under the circ.u.mstances you'll not be especially interested,"

she ventured.

"The trouble is, I'm afraid I'll show too much interest and seem to be prying."

"Will you please step up here where I'll not be obliged to shout at you?"

He obeyed so promptly that he fairly scrambled up the stairs.

"You said down there in the hall last evening that my father was angry and that an angry man says a great deal that he doesn't mean. My father was very, very angry when he and. I arrived home last night."

"I reckoned he would be."

"In his anger he talked to me very freely about you. The question is, should I believe anything he said?"

"I--I don't know," he stammered, "You're not going back on your own statement about an angry man, are you?"

"I don't think it's fair to accept all his statements."

"I'm sorry you still hold that opinion. You see I drew some conclusions of my own from what my father said to me, and those conclusions urge me to apologize to you for the Corson family. I'm afraid you didn't find my father in an apologetic mood this morning."

"Not exactly."

"Doris tells me that I have a New England conscience. I'm not sure. At any rate, I'm feeling very uncomfortable about something! It may be because you're misunderstood by our family. Do I seem forward?"

"No! Of course you don't. But you're putting me in a terrible position. I don't know what to say. I don't want any apologies. They'd make me feel like a fool--more of a fool than I have been."

"Are you admitting now that you were wrong in the stand you took about the water-power and--and--well, about everything?"

He had been listening in distress and perplexity, striving to understand her, groping for the meaning she was hiding behind her quiet manner. But her question struck fire from the flint of his resolution. "That power matter is a principle, and I am not wrong in it. As to the means I used last night, it was bra.s.s and blunder and I'm ashamed of acting that way."

"There's no need of going into the matter. I received a great deal of information from my father--when he was angry. And I woke up early this morning and began to consider the evidence. I was hard at it when you drove up in your car. I have been waiting for you to come from your talk with my father and the Governor. I want to say, Stewart, that when I stood up last night, like a fool, and lectured you about neglecting your opportunities in life I was considering you only as the boss of St.

Ronan's mill. But my father told me what you really are. I have always respected him as a very truthful man, even when he is well worked up by any subject. I must take his word in this matter, though he didn't realize just how complimentary he was in your case. And if you can spare me a few moments, I want you to come into the library."

She walked ahead of him toward the door.

"I think I'll leave the Corson family right out of it, Stewart. I'm a loyal daughter of this state. I'm home again and I've waked up. Humor me in a little conceit, won't you? Let me make believe that I'm the state and listen to me while I tell you what a big, brave, unselfish--"

They were inside the door and he put his arm about her and led her toward the big screen and broke in on her little speech that she was making tremulously, apprehensively, with a sob in her voice, trying to hide her deeper emotions under her mock-dramatics.

"Hush, dear! I don't want to hear any state talk to me! I want to hear only Lana Corson talk. I didn't understand her last night! Now, bless her honest, true heart, I do understand her."

Speech, long repressed, was rushing from his mouth. Then he struggled with words; his excitement choked him. He looked down at her through his tears.

"The bit poem, la.s.sie! You remember it. The poem you recited, and when I sent you the big basket o' posies! All the time since yesterday it has been running in my head. I sat alone in the State House last night and all I could remember was, 'But I will marry my own first love!' I tried to say it out like a man, believing that G.o.d has meant you for me. But I couldn't think I'd be forgiven!"

Lana took his hand between her palms and stopped him at the edge of the screen. She quoted, meeting his adoring eyes with full understanding:

"And I think, in the lives of most women and men, There's a moment when all would go smooth and even--"

She drew him gently with her when she stepped backward.

She had heard the Senator's voice in the corridor; he was escorting Governor North.

On the panels of the screen were embroidered some particularly grotesque j.a.panese countenances. Those pictured personages seemed to be making up faces at the dignitaries who pa.s.sed the open door.

"But I must go to your father, sweetheart," Stewart insisted. "I'd best do it this morning and have it all over with."

This declaration as to duty and deference was not made while Senator Corson was pa.s.sing the door; nor was it made with anything like the prompt.i.tude the Senator might have expected in a matter which was so vitally concerned with a father's interests. In fact it was a long, long time before Stewart had anything to say on that subject. If Senator Corson had been listening again on the other side of the screen, he, no doubt, would have been mightily offended by a delay which seemed to make the father an afterthought in the whole business.

If he had been eavesdropping he would not have heard much, anyway, of an informing nature. He would have heard two voices, tenderly low and incoherent, interrupting eagerly, breaking in on each other to explain and protest and plead. If Stewart's protracted neglect of the interests of a father would have availed to rouse resentment, Lana's reply to Stewart's rueful declaration more surely would have exasperated the Senator; she emphatically commanded Stewart to say not one word on the subject to her father.

"Why, Stewart Morrison, for twenty-four hours you have been taking away my breath by doing the unexpected! You have been grand. Now are you going to spoil everything by dropping right back into the conventional, every-day way of doing things? You shall not! You shall not spoil my new worship of a hero!"

"Well, I won't seem much like a hero if I act as though I'm afraid of your father!"

She raised her voice in amazed query. "For mercy's sake, haven't you been proving that you're not afraid of him?" Once more, jubilantly, teasingly, wrought upon by the revived spirit of the intimacy of the old days, she a.s.sumed a playful pose with him, but this time her sincerity of soul was behind the situation. "Don't you realize, sir, that the calendar of the Hon. Jodrey Wadsworth Corson, on this day and date, is crowded with strictly new business? He is due at the State House very soon. Do you think he can afford to be bothered with unfinished business?"

He worshiped her with silence and a smile.

"Yes, Mister Mayor of Marion, unfinished business--yours and mine! Our business of the old days. But the honorable Senator is perfectly well aware that the business aforesaid is on the calendar. He had been supposing that we had forgotten it. I see a big question in your eyes, Stewart dear! Well, now that you're a party to the action and interested in the matter to be presented, I'll say that after Senator Corson had done his talking to me last evening, or very early this morning, to be more exact, I called on my family grit of which he's so proud and I did a little talking to Senator Corson. And he knows that the business is unfinished--he knows it will be brought duly to his attention--and he'll be in a better frame of mind after his present petulance has worn off."

"Petulance!" Morrison was rather skeptical.

"Exactly! He's just as much of a big child as most men are when another big child tries to take away a plaything. Oh, he was furious, Stewart! But let me tell you something for your comfort. He dwelt most savagely on the fact that you had grabbed in single-handed and beaten a Governor and a United States Senator at their own game! Wonderful, isn't it--admission like that? He has always patronized you as a countryman who knew how to make good cloth and who didn't amount to anything else in the world. Why, in a few days he'll be admitting that he admires you and respects you!"

She paused. After a few moments she went on, her tones low and thrilling.

"I've been trying to explain myself to you, Stewart. You know, now, that I have always loved you. I have told you so in a way that leaves no doubts in a man such as you are. You have forgiven me for being simply human and silly before I woke up to understand you. And you don't misunderstand me any more, do you?" she pleaded, wistfully. "Last night I saw--your big _self_!"

"Lana, it was a wonderful night--more wonderful than I realized till now!"

After a time they became aware of a stir below-stairs and they came out from behind the screen where the j.a.panese faces grinned knowingly.

"Please obey me, Stewart; you must! It's really my trial of you to see if you're obedient when I know it's for your own good. Go down and wait for me." She left him in the corridor and ran away.