Late in the afternoon Shelby shook the last brown hand in the serpentine line of country people which coiled in and out the stuffy parlor of the Lakeview Inn, and cutting loose from the reception committee under cover of a headache, slipped away into the trees. The fringe of the wood was defaced with the litter of picnickers, and smelt of lunch; the din of the agents for new-fangled reapers and ploughs, whose gaudy paint was doubly garish against the sober background, had routed the squirrels and birds; but the remoter paths held only silent lovers, and the camp-ground, where the Widow Weatherwax had mouthed and played the prophet, stripped of its tents, its zealots, its wavering torchlights, was full of wholesome sunlight and forest peace. The spot stirred ghosts, and the governor turned to the murmuring shore with its gentle mimicry of ocean. Half sheltered by a clump of sumach sat a woman upon a bit of driftwood and flung pebbles in the lake. He stared, and then went slowly down to her. "Ruth," he said, "you here!" "Your Excellency startled me." Her banter puzzled him, but the handclasp was warm. "Forget my office," he petitioned. "After your tremendous speech to-day? You were his Excellency the governor of New York with that, and I was properly impressed. It struck me that you would make a benevolent czar." "Are you mocking me?" "God forbid, your Excellency!" "I'd rather be plain Shelby," he said, studying her profile. "I'm glad you heard me--glad that you liked it. It was sincere, and you value sincerity. But I had no notion that you were listening. I supposed you somewhere with the fashionables." "I reached home yesterday, and came at once to my lake cottage. I heard that you were to speak, and braved the picnic to hear you. I trust you appreciate the sacrifice." "And--your husband? Is he here too?" Ruth flung a pebble. "I believe he's addressing a woman suffrage convention in Chicago to-day." She gave him a lazy glance. "And Mrs. Shelby--is she here?" "She's in Saratoga, I believe." "Belief again? We really ought to read the papers." He tried to search her face, but the pebble-throwing prevented. The Widow Weatherwax had expatiated on the topic of Mrs. Bernard Graves's unhappiness, with tedious variations on the saw about marrying in haste to repent at leisure. He wondered--he scarce knew what. She drew him with all the old attraction, but an elusive something had vanished. He guessed that it was the essence of youth, though the form lingered. "Are you happy, Ruth?" he asked abruptly. She looked him in the eyes, and laughed. "That reminds me of your unofficial self," she said. "You never could invent small talk for the feminine mind." "You were never the kind of woman who wanted it." "I better appreciate its uses nowadays. It conceals either the absence or presence of thought. Bless me! there's an epigram. But I'm afraid it's merely an echo of Voltaire."