“One never knows,” he said, and held out his hand. She placed her hand in his, and then he performed an act so out of tune with Evan Pell, pedant and egoist, that Carmel gasped. He lifted her hand to his lips. The gesture was not artificial, not funny. There was a grave dignity, a sincerity in the act which made it seem quite the right thing to have done. “Good-by,” he said. “You are very lovely.... Please make haste....” He helped her into the car, and she turned. “Mr. Pell----” she said, but he was gone, had returned to the office and was invisible. “Ready, miss?” the driver asked. “You know where you are to go?” “Yes, miss.” “Whose car is this?” “Mr. Whitefield’s,” said the driver, as he threw in his gear and the machine moved up the street. Carmel’s mind was not on the car, nor on its destination, nor upon her errand. It was upon Bartholomew Pell.... Could she have seen him seated before his table, could she have read his thoughts, have comprehended the expression of happiness upon his face, she would have thought even more urgently of him.... For he was saying to himself: “Thank God she’s out of it. She’s safe. I’ve done that much, anyhow.” He drew the mysterious note from his pocket and studied it attentively. “She would have gone,” he said, “so I shall go.... Doubtless it is a trap of some sort--but it may not be.... And she is safe--she is safe.” CHAPTER XVIII Carmel wondered how one went about it to obtain a private interview with a Governor. She was still young enough and inexperienced enough in life’s valuations to regard a man in that position as necessarily above the ordinary run of men. His office invested him with a certain glamour, a fictitious greatness. Governors, Senators, Presidents! Youth invested them with a terrific dignity. It is somewhat difficult, even for the wise and prudent, to see the man apart from his vestments; to understand that there is, in reality, very slight difference between human beings, and to approach those in authority with the sure knowledge that, no matter how lofty their position, they have, at best, but two arms and two legs, a fondness for mince pies, and a failing for colds in the nose. Governors quarrel with their wives, and have ingrowing toe nails. The forty-eight of them, heads of the several states of the Union, remind one of the main street in a boom town--two stories on the sidewalk, but a ramshackle shed in the rear.... No sooner did the dome of the Capitol appear through a break in the wheels than Carmel began to dress herself mentally for the meeting. She had a horrible fear she would become tongue-tied and thrust her thumb in her mouth like an embarrassed little girl who has forgotten her piece.... She glanced at her watch. It was five o’clock.