"And I suppose I counted on your habit," he said, utterly unable to control the tenderness in voice or glance. "I wanted you to go with me to-day--I hoped you would though you never have," she answered him with a divine seriousness in her lifted eyes. "They are all coming to dinner and then you'll go to the office, so I hoped about this morning." She was utterly lovely in her gentleness and a strange peace fell into the troubled heart of the man at her side. And it followed him into the dim church and made the hour he sat at her side one of holy healing. Once as they knelt together during the service she slipped her gloved hand into his for an instant and from its warmth there flowed a strength of which he stood in dire need and from which he drew courage to go on for the few days remaining before his exile. Just to protect her, he prayed, and leave her unhurt, and he failed to see that the humility and blindness of a great love were leading him into the perpetration of a great cruelty, to the undoing of them both. Then in the long days that followed so hunted was he by his love of her that that one hour of peace in the Sunday morning was all he dared give himself with her. And in her gentle trustfulness it was not hard to make his excuses, for the Monday morning brought the strenuosity in the career of David Kildare to a state of absolute acuteness. To the candidate the three days were as ten years crowded into as many hours. Down at his headquarters in the _Gray Picket_ rooms he stood firm and met wave after wave of fluctuating excitement that surged around him with his head up, a ring in his laugh and an almost superhuman tact. As late as Wednesday noon there appeared before him three excited Anti-Saloon League matrons with plans to put committees of ladies at all the polls to hand out lemonade and entreaties--perhaps threats--to the voters as they exercised their civic function. They had planned banners with "Shall The Saloon Have My Boy?" in large letters thereon inscribed and they were morally certain that without the carrying out of their plan the day would be lost. It took David Kildare one hour and a quarter to persuade them that it would be better to have a temperance rally at the theater on Wednesday night at which each of the three should make most convincing speeches to the assembled women of the city, thereby furnishing arguments to their sisters with which to start the men to the polls next day. He promised to come and make a short opening speech and they left him with their plans changed but their enthusiasm augmented. David sank into a chair and mopped his shining brow. The major had been witness to the encounter from the editorial desk and Cap Cantrell was bent double with laughter behind a pile of papers he was searching for data for Andrew. "I'm all in, Major," said David faintly. "Just pick up the pieces in a basket."