The Candidate: A Political RomanceAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
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The Candidate: A Political Romance
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
Political campaigns -- Fiction; Political fiction
Sylvia was sitting in the parlor beside a window that looked out upon a
vast range of snow-covered mountains, rising like the serrated teeth of
a saw, and, although she heard his footsteps, she did not turn her face
until Harley stood beside her. Then she said, irrelevantly:
"Isn't that a grand view!"
"You did not send for me to tell me that," said Harley, with a certain
protecting tenderness in his tone, because what he took to be the
sadness in her face appealed to his manly qualities.
"No, I did not. I have been thinking over what we said to each other
when we were coming back from Crow's Wing, and I have concluded that it
was wrong."
"Why was it wrong? I love you, and I had the right to tell you so."
"No, you did not. You would have had were I free, but I am promised to
another. I was wrong to let you speak; I was wrong to listen to you."
"I will not admit it," said Harley, doggedly, "because Mr. Plummer is
going to give you up. He will see that he ought not to hold you to this
promise."
She smiled sadly.
"I must be loyal to him," she said, "and before starting for Salt Lake
City I want to tell you that you must not again speak to me of this."
"But I shall write to you in Salt Lake."
"You must not write of this. If you do, I will not open another one of
your letters."
"I promise not to write to you of love, but I make no promise after
that. You are not going from Salt Lake to Idaho? This is not an excuse
to leave us for good?"
Her eyes wavered before his. It may be that she had intended to abandon
the campaign permanently, but, with his straight and masterful glance
demanding an honest answer, she could not say it.
"Yes, I will come back," she said, and then, with a sudden burst of
feeling: "Oh, I like your group; I like all of you. This great journey
has been something fresh and wonderful to me, and I do not want to leave
it!"
"I thought not," said Harley, with returning confidence, "and I am glad
that you sent for me here, because it has given me a chance to tell you
that, while you mean to keep your promise, I also mean to keep mine.
Mr. Plummer will yet yield you up. You are mine, not his, you know you
are!"
He bent suddenly and kissed her lightly on the forehead, and every nerve
in her tingled at the first touch of the lips of the man whom she loved.
Yet with the sense of right, of loyalty to another, strong within her,
she was about to protest, but he was gone, and the first kiss still
tingled on her forehead. She felt as if he had put there an invisible
seal, and that now in very truth she belonged to him.
The two ladies under the escort of Mr. Plummer left an hour later for
Salt Lake City, and everybody was at the station to see them go. Mrs.
Grayson was quiet as usual, and Sylvia was noticeably subdued, a fact
which most of them ascribed to the tragedy of Flying Cloud and her
coming absence of two weeks from a most interesting campaign.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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