“It would oblige you to take a trip to Texas during the Christmas recess, and you would have to spend two or three months down there next summer, but I am persuaded we shall reach an early adjournment, so it would not necessarily interfere with you in any way. Besides, it might be useful to you in other ways, and it would be decidedly useful to me. It would show the people in the State that you and I are working well together in harness, and God knows I need some assurances of the sort to be given! That scoundrel, Governor Sanders, has been knifing me right and left all over the State, and I look for trouble both at the convention next summer and when I am up for re-election a year and a half from now.” Crane remained silent a minute or two and grew pale. Senator Bicknell thought he was a little overcome at what was really a very magnificent offer to a man in his situation in life. Annette, who had taken in, with perfect intelligence, all Senator Bicknell was saying, kept her eyes away from her husband. If he were in league with Governor Sanders---- Crane was not only overcome, he was overwhelmed. The thought came crashing through his brain, “This is the man I am secretly trying to destroy.” Every word the Senator uttered seemed to have the force of a thousand voices. “That scoundrel, Sanders.” Yes, Sanders was a scoundrel, but he had never pretended to be a friend of Senator Bicknell’s, nor was he indebted to the Senator for anything. Their warfare had been open and above-board, while his--oh, God! Crane could have cried aloud in his torture when he recalled the league with hell into which he had entered. His head was reeling, he heard the Senator’s voice afar off; the ruby light falling upon Annette, in her shining white gown, seemed to be a hundred miles away. Yet, with a calm voice, and with only a slight tremor of his hands, Crane answered: “I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have made me a very splendid proposition; twenty thousand dollars to a rural Congressman is a great deal of money, and as for the confidence you show in me, I feel it more than I can express.” He was conscious that he was displaying wonderful nerve; when he began to speak he scarcely knew whether he could get through with a single sentence, but he had spoken with tolerable ease and composure. Of course, he must appear as if he would accept; he could not on the spur of the moment devise any plausible refusal; he must have time to think; but it was utterly impossible that he should consider the matter for a moment. He was not yet bad enough for that. If only he had remained honest! For nothing brings home a man’s evil-doing to him more than when he sees the result in a concrete form. His wrong-doing comes out of the regions of mind and morals, and becomes a tangible and visible thing, like an incarnate devil. He realises his sin when he receives the wages of sin.