In the afternoon, to the governor’s private room in the Capitol came Harvey Sayler. Nominally, Sayler was a rich United States Senator and the state leader of the Republican party machine. Actually, he was the boss of the machines of both parties, was an overlord of bosses, was the plutocracy’s honored and courted major-general for the Middle West. As the masses in their slow, dim way were beginning to realize that parties and politics were not matters of principle but of pocket filling--and pocket-emptying, Sayler was being denounced, was being built up into a figure of greater menace, and therefore of greater public admiration and respect, than the actualities warranted, powerful and dangerous though he was. But he had remained the affable, cynically good-humored good fellow. Whenever one of the plutocracy’s thoroughly pliant tools was in high office, Sayler and he always pretended to quarrel, got the newspapers to fool the public with big headlines--“Fearless governor (or attorney-general or judge) breaks with the bosses”--and Sayler and he met only in the stealthiest privacy, if meeting became necessary. Whenever a more or less independent man was in office, Sayler always kept on terms of the greatest apparent friendliness with him--for obvious reasons. As Helm had shown in his talk with Bill Desbrough, he understood Sayler. And Sayler, knowing that he could gain nothing by deceiving Helm in their personal talks, gave himself the pleasure of being almost frank. “Well, Governor,” said he, “how goes the game of honest politics?” “I needn’t tell _you_,” replied Helm, good-humoredly. “You’ll some day see I was right when I warned you there was no such thing as honest politics.” “Did I ever deny it?” said Helm. “How could there be honest politics? Human society is, necessarily, modeled as yet upon the only example man had to guide them--nature, with her cruel law of the survival of the fittest. Men live by taking advantage of one another--of one another’s ignorance, stupidity, necessity, cowardice. And politics--it’s simply the struggle between warring appetites, between competing selfishnesses.” “Then what’s the use of exhorting men to stop robbing each other?” inquired Sayler. “Isn’t my plan the wiser--and the better?--to try to show the strong that they shouldn’t strip the weak--that they should content themselves with all the harvest, and not uproot and so prevent another harvest.” “I admit you have your usefulness,” replied Helm. “But I insist that my sort of politician is useful also. You are trying to soften the strong, we to strengthen the weak. But”--with eyes suddenly twinkling--“I’ve been expecting you. I knew your plan was about complete.” “My plan?”