When the bill had come over from the senate half an hour before, the crowd had rushed over with it, burst into the house and pushed down the aisle, choking the passage. Holman saw several senators come over to see the end; he saw the governor’s private secretary, and old Benson, the governor’s political manager, and--Baldwin, suave and bland as usual, yet, as Holman could see on a second closer look, intensely anxious and concerned. He was paler than Holman had ever seen him. The air of the chamber was hot and fetid; there was a low, ominous grumbling. Dalby was on his feet on the Republican side, Quinn on the Democratic--the program under Baldwin’s eye and the speaker’s would be hurried through. In the curious way in which secrets cease to be secrets and permeate the mind of the mass, it was generally known how every man would vote, and it was understood that the climax, somehow, would come with the calling of the name of McCray, of Jasper. The roll-call moved slowly on down the alphabet; Greggerson’s voice resounded; its boom could have been heard through open windows three blocks away: “Lyendorf!” “Aye.” “Lynn, of Sangamon!” “No.” “Lynn, of Vermilion!” “No.” “McBroom!” “No.” “McCoy!” “Aye.” “McCray!” Holman strained forward with the crowd. McCray hesitated, looked up, then shouted: “No!” There was a sharp volley of applause, a clapping of hands which had in it perhaps, a certain too self-righteous quality; and there were human groans and hoots, and at his elbow Holman heard an oath and turned to face Baldwin. The face of the lobbyist was white with rage and moist with fine globules of perspiration, and there were revealed to Holman in the brilliant, new illuminations of that moment certain lines that once had not been there, lines not drawn by age, and Holman saw them with a fierce, vindictive joy. But McCray was coming, battling his way down the aisle, escaping the congratulations, curses, praises, objurgations of the men who crowded about him. He got away from them and came back, and, as he took Holman’s hand, his tired, drawn face was touched with a smile. Baldwin, there beside them, saw it, stared at Holman incredulously and said: “Well, I’ll be damned!” But Holman had no attention for Baldwin then. “Let’s get out of this,” he said to McCray. And when, out of that weltering chaos, they found themselves in the rotunda, in the mysterious semi-gloom that filled its great, inverted bowl, the gloom which all the electric lights could not wholly dissipate, Holman quickly drew his hand from his pocket, pressed it into McCray’s, and said: “Here, this belongs to--” Holman hesitated, as at a new point in ethics. “To Baldwin,” said McCray. “Yes,” he went on wearily, “I’ll give it back to him.”