Helm reflected. “No,” he finally said. “I’ve put her out of my mind before, and I can do it again. Whenever I don’t want to think of anything, I get together so many other things to worry about that there isn’t room or time to worry about it. She’s flying. Let her fly. That settles it.” “Didn’t you tell me you proposed to her?” Helm nodded. “And that she accepted you?” “But it’s all over,” said Helm. “By no means,” declared the adroiter man. “She has given you her promise. She will say nothing because she will not wish to hurt you. But she’ll keep to her promise until you release her.” Helm looked dismal. “Is that the way those things are managed?” “You’ll ruin her life, Helm. You’ve got to go to her--like a man. Don’t do a cowardly thing--such as silence, or writing a foolish note. Face her. It’s the only square thing.” And to Helm it seemed so. He groaned. “Come along. I’ll go with you, and see that you and she have a chance for an undisturbed talk.” “Wait a minute. I want to think.” Helm went to the window and stared out into the capitol grounds. Sayler seated himself, lit a cigar and read a newspaper. Never had cake of his been spoiled by messing at the baking but unbaked dough. Helm took much more than the one minute he had asked for. When he turned, it was to say with the composure of a man under control: “Thank you, Sayler--you’ve done me a good turn. I am nothing of a lady’s man. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have done something that as you say would have been contemptible. I’m ready when you are.” Rarely is there a successful man--even the crude seeker of petty power rising to foreman of the gang of laborers--who has not, however tough his skin or hide may seem to be, a supersensitive nervous system, more acute than that of ordinary men and women, though they may pretend to the most delicate sensitiveness. Sayler was as sensitive as he seemed phlegmatic. He never failed to sense the mood of the person he was with. Therefore, he dropped the subject of Eleanor and talked speeches. Helm, another man of that same acute sensibility, responded as if he had no concern in the world beyond discussion of how speeches should be worked up and delivered. Sayler, deeply interested in the subject and in the man, led him on to describe his own method, this so sympathetically--rather than adroitly--that Helm took from his pocket an old letter on the blank side of whose single sheet he had outlined the “backbone” of a speech he was to make against a perpetual grant of a big trolley franchise. The franchise meant, of course, the creation of a huge mass of stocks and bonds which would enable many generations of a certain group of the upper class to live luxuriously by taking impudent toll from the masses in exchange for no service rendered.