"I'm not proposing to marry you," she said bluntly. "That makes a difference." "It does," said he, meeting her eyes unflinchingly. "If you weren't a brave man, I shouldn't say such a thing to you. Anyhow I understand you're the last man in the world who should take me for a fool." "My God!" said Paul in a choky voice. "What can I do to thank you?" "Win the election." "You are still my dearest lady--my very very dearest lady," said he. Her shrewd eyes fell upon the cornelian heart. She picked it up and held it out to him on her plump palm. "Why have you taken this off your watch-chain?" "It's a little false god," said he. "It's the first thing yon asked for when you recovered from your illness. You said you had kept it since you were a tiny boy. See? I remember. You set great value on it then?" "I believed in it," said Paul. "And now you don't? But a woman gave it to you." "Yes," said Paul, wondering, in his masculine way, how the deuce she knew that. "I was a brat of eleven." "Then keep it. Put it on your chain again. I'm sure it's a true little god. Take it back to please me." As there was nothing, from lapping up Eisel to killing a crocodile, that Paul would not have done, in the fulness of his wondering gratitude, for his dearest lady, he meekly attached the heart to his chain and put it in his pocket. "I must tell you," said he, "that the lady--she seemed a goddess to me then--chose me as her champion in a race, a race of urchins at a Sunday school treat, and I didn't win. But she gave me the cornelian heart as a prize." "But as my champion you will win," said Miss Winwood. "My dear boy," she said, and her eyes grew very tender as she laid her hand on the young man's arm, "believe what an old woman is telling you is true. Don't throw away any little shred of beauty you've ever had in your life. The beautiful things are really the true ones, though they may seem to be illusions. Without the trinket or what it stood for, would you be here now?" "I don't know," replied Paul. "I might have taken a more honest road to get here." "We took you to ourselves as a bright human being, Paul--not for what you might or might not have been. By the way, what have you decided as regards making public the fact of your relationship?" "My father, for his own reasons, has urged me not to do so." Miss Winwood drew a long breath. "I'm glad to hear it," she said. So Paul, comforted by one woman's amazing loyalty, went out that evening and addressed his great meeting. But the roar of applause that welcomed him echoed through void spaces of his being. He felt neither thrill nor fear. The speech prepared by the Fortunate Youth was delivered by a stranger to it, glowing and dancing eloquence. The words came trippingly enough, but the informing Spirit was gone.