He was too amazed to return her salutation. He stared at her, then he bowed his thick neck and stared at the flabby bag. He did not even offer her a seat, but she was in no way disconcerted by that. She chose a chair, drew it up in front of him, sat down, and crumpled the bag up in her lap. "I came to see you on a matter of business, Mr. Prim," she said, coming briskly to the point. "I suppose you've been expecting me?" "No," he managed to say. "I'd given you credit then for more sense than you seem to have, for I'm the only hope you have now." She said that in tones of conviction. "You are the last person in the world I'd look upon as a--hope!" he returned slowly, widening his lips into a grin which was also a sneer. "You are at the end of your rope. You've been so for a month. You can't squeeze another dollar out of this town for your campaign fund. The men have lost confidence in you." "How'd you come by so much useful information?" he interrupted. "I have it. That's the point. You'll never dare announce yourself a candidate for representative. You gave that up three months ago." "What makes you think so?" he asked, fixing his eyes upon her face with deep reptilian concentration. "I don't think, I know it. You went on with your collections for private, personal reasons. But you did not deposit a single dollar of it in this bank, and you knew from the day Sarah Mosely's will was read up here in Judge Regis's office that you did not have a ghost of a chance to be elected, and you made up your mind that day not to run." "Your powers of penetration are well known, Madam, but again I must ask you how you have penetrated so far into my secret thoughts, granting of course for the sake of argument that you have done so?" he said, now in complete possession of his faculties, and coolly on guard. "I saw you listening at Judge Regis's office door the day the will was read, and the day we first discussed our plans for winning equal suffrage for women in this country. You are the only man in it who has known positively from the first that we can do it!" she answered, and showed her nerve by keeping her gaze fixed imperturbably upon him. He bent forward, his face slowly purpling with rage, his fists clenched, his upper lip skinned back from his teeth as he hissed: "You are a--you did not see me!" "I didn't see you, that's a fact, but I saw your shadow in the ground-glass door, cast by the light from the window at the end of the hall. Nobody could mistake it for any other shape who'd ever seen you, Mike Prim!" They sat for the briefest moment measuring each other, he with incredible ferocity, and Susan with her lips primped, grimly fearless. "Now that we understand each other, let's get down to business!" she began. "To business?" he snarled.