The two girls exclaimed, though they enjoyed the risk of it, and sat while Garwood celebrated Rankin's virtues as a friend and as a politician. When he found room for more quotable profanity Emily laid her palm lightly over his mouth, and at this demonstration of affection Dade rose and said significantly: "Well, I think it high time I was going and leaving you alone." There was a little show of protest, but she went, Garwood standing in the middle of the room wondering if the proprieties demanded that he accompany Emily as she escorted Dade to the door; but he withdrew into the security of that dignity which stood him in such good stead in all social crises, and bowed as if the retiring girl were an audience or a jury. The two girls lingered in the hall longer than Garwood thought necessary, though he lost his objection in the satisfaction of the conviction that they were discussing him. Garwood, of course, stayed to that unclassified meal which is served on Sunday evenings. The repast which Emily in the absence of the servants laid herself, was without formality, and the girl artfully contrived to hide from him the extra preparation that was represented by the bowl of salad she brought forth and set in the midst of the white linen and all the glitter of the table service. Garwood and Mr. Harkness talked of men's topics during the meal and Emily was silent with the silence of the woman in her serving, though her eyes gleamed at the comradeship she thought she recognized in the two men. She did not know how thoroughly the real thought of each man was with her, though Garwood from time to time reflected on the comparison that might be made between the plainness of his mother's table on Sunday evenings and the elegance of the one at which he now expanded himself. It was late when he went home that night. As he left he told Emily, in their lengthened farewells, that it had been the happiest Sunday he had ever known. XVIII Everywhere the campaign was closing, as the newspapers said, in a blaze of glory. From their headquarters in New York the managers of the two great parties were issuing their last impossible claims, their last careful instructions, their last solemn warnings. Partisan hatred raged in every hamlet in the land, and the whole nation was given over to the last passion of its quadrennial tragedy of personal ambitions. Down in the Thirteenth Congressional District of Illinois, Garwood was making his final tour of the seven counties, speaking many times daily. He was disheveled and bedraggled, he went without shaving, without sleeping, much of the time without food. He had turned into a mere smiling automaton, that could drink, talk in a husky voice, and go on and on. Insensible to bodily fatigue and discomfort, his only physical sensation was a constant longing for tobacco, and he smoked all the time.