She looked at him in amazement that each moment widened her eyes the more; looked at him and then looked at the paper he held to the leaf of her desk with a trembling finger. She took the pen mechanically. "Here," he said, jerking out his words; "right there--under my name. You're to sign with me." She noted the blaze in his eyes; the odor of tobacco and liquor he exhaled oppressed her; she looked from him to the paper on the desk, then back to him again. In her bewilderment she gasped: "Why--what is it for?" "Oh, it's a note!" he said, crossly, while his brows gathered in his impatience. "Sign it, quick! I haven't a minute to lose! I'll explain it to you afterward." She looked again into his brilliant eyes, she felt his tainted breath upon her face, then something of his own fever of haste caused her heart to leap, and she put her name to the note below where Jerome had scrawled his own. Garwood snatched up the note and thrust it back in his pocket. Then he turned to go. But Emily arose and caught at him. "Jerome! Dear! What is it! What has happened? What is it for?" The tumult of his troubled soul broke forth and he poured it out upon her. "It's for money--money--money!" he cried, and he smote the unstable little desk with his fist, making it rock. "What is everything for in these days!" His breath came hard and fast, the blue crescents in which his eyes burned deepened perceptibly, and his eyes flamed as if all the fires of all excitement were about to leap out. In his cheeks, now of an unusual pallor, two red spots glowed. "But what is the money for?" she persisted, still clinging to him as he backed away from her. "Tell me--won't you?" "It's for votes--votes--votes! Votes that I need more to-day than I ever needed them!" "Oh, Jerome!" she cried. "Don't--don't say that, don't talk that way! Wait--wait, dear, sit down until you're calmer." "Calmer!" he roared. "Calmer! With all my enemies at my heels?" "But, dear, I don't like the sound of that. It would be better if you were beaten honorably." "Honorably!" he sneered. "Honorably! Do you know what it would mean to me to be beaten now? Do you know what it would mean to _you_! Do you want to go to the poor-house?" He stopped in his mad rush of words and flung out his jaw at her pugnaciously. Emily stood trying to hold her husband's wild, unsteady eyes in her own gaze for a moment. "Why, Jerome," she said in low, even accents, "it would be as bad as--as--as that story they told of you in your first campaign!" His face without relaxing took on the mockery of a smile, then he laughed harshly. The tone of the laugh shuddered through Emily. She had released her hold on him, and now she took a step backward. Her lips were parted and at last she spoke, her words coming reluctantly from her throat. It was scarcely above a whisper that she said: "Was that all--true?"