"I will come back. You must do as I tell you." "I will do as you tell me." John Dennis had been sitting by the window so that Rhoda had to stare into the light. He got up and approached her. She stood up and waited for him, motionless. He came close and looked at her curiously. His eyes went up and down her body. He laid a hand on her left breast and pressed gently. She did not move. "I will come back. You will not tell anyone I have been here or that we talked." He left without saying good-bye. After he was gone, Rhoda stood where she was, motionless, for several minutes. Her mind was on the place he had touched her. She had never before experienced such a reaction. Never before had a man's hand, even on her bare flesh, produced such thrill and excitement. Desperately, her common sense struggled with this new thing. She dismissed with annoyance the callow, schoolgirl thought that this was the way love finally came--in the door, unannounced, to take over a woman's heart and soul and body. Ridiculous. The intellectual Rhoda agreed, but the emotional Rhoda continued to toy with the idea, finding it a fascination, a joy. But there was something more than the intellectual and the emotional; a deeper, frightening numbness; a strange paralysis of mind she could not come to grips with; it kept eluding her even as she reached out for it. Fear? She wondered. But mainly she thought of John Dennis, the strange man who had walked in her door and to whom she had surrendered without a struggle. _My God. What happened to me? What happened to Rhoda Kane?_ Abruptly she dropped the thought--it did not seem important. * * * * * Senator Crane sat in the dining room of the Mayflower Hotel. His guest was Matthew Porter, a mystery man, also, of the Brent Taber type, but a little more clearly defined in that he had a title and a department of government. But far more important to Crane, he outranked Taber. One other point of importance: Matthew Porter was, in the terms even Senator Crane used, "something of a fathead." "Maybe I am a Senator," Crane said jovially, "and maybe we boys up there think we have a hand in directing you fellows--still I'm flattered that you could find time to lunch with me." Porter had a thin, aristocratic face, delicate features. His expression was usually benign, but there was steel behind it. He could scowl and hurl righteous invective, for instance, when a policeman questioned his right to park by a fireplug in spite of his official license plates. But mainly he was a shy person who nursed his inferiority complex in secret. "That's very flattering, Senator. But the truth is quite the opposite. It's we fellows who are honored to put ourselves at your beck and call. After all, you're the ones the people elect to office." The flattery boomeranged nicely and put Porter one up on Crane.