"And you are going to give up?" Ellery urged, incredulous.

"I haven't decided. Perhaps I have done with politics."

"And if you abandon your public career, what are you going to do?"

"What do other failures do?"

"Oh, stuff!" exclaimed Norris, and began to pace the room. "Then you did not vote for the franchise because you believed in it. Somebody has a pull on you. I'd never have believed that any man in this wide world would get a pull on d.i.c.k Percival."

"Well, somebody has," said d.i.c.k shortly. "I wouldn't say so much as that to any mortal but yourself. Now spare me, Ellery, and don't carry it any further. Do you think," he went on bitterly, "that I have not gone over the whole ground and told myself the old truths that never mean anything to you until life rams them home on your consciousness? A man may creep out from under the machinery of state law, and escape from the punishment he deserves; but from the laws under which we really live, there is no escape. It is reap what you sow; hate and you shall be hated; sin and suffer. And it isn't as though one went out to sow. One sows perforce, every minute, whether he will or not. In some instances the reaping is singularly little fun, Ellery."

"Well, whatever hold this mysterious some one has on you, be a man.

Stand up and own yourself and let the consequences go hang."

"I know some men could. You could. That's the advantage of having taken a good many hard blows. You learn to stand up against them," d.i.c.k answered slowly. "You know other people's opinion has always been a G.o.d to me. I haven't the strength to defy it now."

There was a short silence, then d.i.c.k laid his arms across his friend's shoulders, quite in the old friendly way.

"Now may we drop that subject and be good pals again?"

"Not yet," Ellery said sharply. "We won't drop it till I've had one more say. d.i.c.k, don't be knocked out by a single blow. You! Why, I thought you had a grip like a bulldog. I can't believe even in this ugly mess.

Still less will I believe that you haven't the courage--that you aren't man enough to own your defeat, and then go on as though you hadn't been beaten."

d.i.c.k poked at the andirons with his toe. Suddenly he looked up with a flash of his old brilliance and buoyancy.

"Suppose I do!" he exclaimed. "What a fellow you are, Ellery, to stick to me this way! But don't underestimate my difficulty. I'm not an absolute coward, but I've been beaten not only once, but on both flanks and in the middle. Everything in life seemed to be giving me a kick. I was at the bottom when you came in, but if you believe in me, perhaps I'll begin to believe in myself again. You've always been telling me how much I did for you. You've done more for me to-night than I ever dreamed of doing for you."

Ellery's face cleared. They stood with clasped hands, and there seemed no need of further explanations or a.s.surances. Norris drew a long breath of relief.

"So we are friends still?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Till the Judgment Day and beyond."

"Now good-by," said d.i.c.k, as though anxious to get rid of him, "till to-morrow."

"Till to-morrow."

A moment later a radiant vision stood in the doorway making a pouting face.

"d.i.c.k," said Lena.

d.i.c.k started and stiffened himself as though to give battle, his hands rested on the chair-back in front of him, but an instant's survey of his wife's rose-leaf face, her well-groomed ma.s.ses of hair, her dainty evening gown, seemed to inspire another att.i.tude. He threw his arms pa.s.sionately around her.

"Oh, Lena," he cried, "love me! You must love me--you have cost me so dear!"

"Nonsense!" Lena gave him a sharp push and spoke resentfully. "I'm not half so extravagant as most of the women we know."

d.i.c.k drew away and became rigid again.

"Extravagant!" he exclaimed as though to himself. "You have cost me my self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best friendship. What higher price could a man pay for the thing he loves?"

"I do think, d.i.c.k," said Lena severely, "that you can talk the silliest nonsense of any person I ever heard. What on earth is the meaning of all this? No--no--" as she saw that he was getting ready to reply. "I have not time to hear. I thought that tiresome Mr. Norris would never go.

What can you see in him?--Have you forgotten that we are going to the Country Club for dinner? It's long past time for you to dress."

"Imagine it! I had forgotten that dinner!" d.i.c.k answered bitterly. For a moment he turned away as though, he would not see her while he readjusted something in himself. He felt like a different man and looked to her indefinably strange when he faced her again quietly. To himself he was saying, "What would Ellery do?" and on his answer to his own question he was readjusting his whole life.

"We will not go out this evening, Lena," he said. "We've come to a crisis in our affairs more important than a club dinner."

"What, have you been losing money?" cried Lena, startled and resentful.

d.i.c.k looked at her with a very unpleasant smile.

"No," he answered. "I wonder what you would say if I told you that I was ruined?"

Lena gasped with horror. For the moment she could not speak. A gulf of poverty--no one knew better than she what that meant--yawned before her.

A blind fury against d.i.c.k, if he should have plunged her into this, possessed her; and d.i.c.k watched her and read her as he had never done before.

"Will you sit down?" he asked courteously. "I want to talk with you--just by our two selves. I haven't lost any money, Lena. Let me relieve your mind of its worst apprehension." Her face smoothed, but she seated herself quietly, puzzled and foreboding. d.i.c.k was so singularly inaccessible.

"I've lost no money," he repeated, "but I've come desperately near ruin for all that. Lena, a moment ago I made a real appeal to your love. You answered me by a shrug and a push for fear that I might muss that very pretty and exceedingly becoming gown. It was a kind of ill.u.s.tration of all our married life."

Lena still stared at him dumbly, vague with uncomprehending fear. This didn't seem like the easy-going husband she knew. She wished he would look at her.

"When we were married," he went on, "I had a dream that a man's wife stood for his ideals, that he might mold his life by her purity and n.o.bleness and love. I've always been saying, in effect, 'Lead on, Mrs.

Percival and I will follow where you lead!' You've led me into the depths, Lena, and I'm never going to say that to you any more. You and I have got to remold our relations and start again."

"What has happened?" Lena asked faintly, and feeling very helpless. She seemed suddenly to realize how very big d.i.c.k's body was, and how little chance she stood against it. If he was inaccessible in spirit she had no hold over him. She wished he would get angry. That would be something concrete. She would know how to meet it.

"What has happened?" she repeated.

"Only this," d.i.c.k said. "I am going to refuse to delude myself any longer; and it is fair to you as it is to me that you should know it. I am going to stop telling myself that you are my ideal woman, when you have shown me, for instance, your unwillingness to make such tender self-sacrifice as a mother must give to a child--that you are true and honest when you are guilty of an underhand thrust like that little squib about Madeline--that--"

"Ah," shrieked Lena, leaping to her feet with the light beginning to come into her eyes. "So that's what's the matter! That girl--"

"No," said d.i.c.k evenly, "that is not what cuts most. What hurts through and through, Lena, is the knowledge that you don't even love me enough, in spite of all my wasted pa.s.sion, to keep from intriguing with another man behind my back for the sake of a few bits of red gla.s.s."

"How--did Mr. Early--?" Lena began, but he interrupted her again.

"Did it seem such a simple thing to keep me perpetually blinded? Last night, Lena, I paid your debt to Mr. Early. I sold my vote in the council, along with my self-respect and my honor in the sight of others to get back this shred of paper. Once I might have thought you sinned ignorantly, but I know you better now. Here is that priceless sc.r.a.p." He drew it from his pocket and threw it into her lap. "Now I've swept away all the mists! There can't be any sweet illusions between you and me, Lena." He drew a sharp breath.

Lena's heart was beating very fast and her eyes were down. She saw shrewdly that there was no need of argument on any of these topics. The less she said about them the better for her. And d.i.c.k, with his hands in his pockets, was watching her from the other side of the room. She twisted the piece of paper in her hands. She had always a bald way of telling herself the truth. Now she would face d.i.c.k in the same spirit.

After all, she was his wife. He couldn't get away from that.

"Well," she said, "I suppose you don't love me any more?" Her voice was like her mother's, acid and selfish.

"Do you love me?" asked d.i.c.k.

"No!" said Lena. She saw him writhe and felt glad that she had the power to hurt him, but he answered very gently.