“You’ll have to look after the money, Ellen,” confessed Helm. “I’m a fool about it. I’ve got mighty little use for the blamed stuff, anyhow. Besides, it’ll give you something to do.” She looked at him with a shrewd smile. “You’re going to test me?--isn’t that it?” He nodded. “I want to find out just what you’ve got to learn. Just because I _had_ to go into this, I didn’t go in blind. I can’t do things that way.” “I guess we’ve both been doing a lot of thinking since last spring.” She slipped her hand into his. “I don’t know what I’ve got to learn, but I do know that I’m going to learn it.” He looked at her, with that expression in his eyes which gave her the sense of love and strength and tenderness superhuman. He said: “Yes--I can count on you, Ellen.” “As long as you look at me like that,” said she, “I’ll not ever be anything but happy. I’d not be a woman, if I were.” VI THE TEST In the large back yard of the “Executive Mansion” the young governor, George Helm, was wheeling his first born--George Helm, also--up and down the shady central walk in a perambulator of the latest scientific make. The baby was giving the healthy baby’s fascinating exhibition of the fathomless peace and content that can be got only from sleep. The Governor and Bill Desbrough, the state Attorney-General and his one really intimate friend, were talking politics. At the window of the sitting-room sat Eleanor Helm, sewing--when she was not watching the two Georges--_her_ two Georges. There are two things as brief as any in this world of brevities--the babyhood of her first born to the mother who loves babies, and his term of office to the public man who loves office. It so happened that both these befell the Helms at the same time. George married Eleanor Clearwater, daughter of the lumber king and United States Senator, a few weeks before he was inaugurated; and the first baby came toward the end of the second year of that famous stormy term of his. It was now the spring of his fourth year as governor. Both he and the young woman at the window looked younger than when they married--without the consent which her father dared not publicly withhold, or indeed privately, since he had not the courage to cut himself off from his only child. The reason the hands were turning backward for Helm and his wife was, of course, happiness. A man often loves a woman--a girl--for the possibilities he sees in her which he fancies he can realize. Indeed one of woman’s best beguilements for “leading on” the man she wants is the subtle creating or encouragement of this same fancy. But when a woman really does love a man, she loves him for himself, wishes him to stay exactly as he is. Eleanor had taken the lank, tall, rural-looking impersonation of strength, gentleness and self-unconscious simplicity because that was what she wanted. Having got it and finding that it did not change, she proceeded to be happy. The slovenly woman’s way of being happy is to go to pieces.