Her laugh was a caress. "Don't put my rudeness upon the sex," she said. "It's because I dabble in paints and things that I thought of these flowers first as a picture. But I assure you I'm just as much given to plundering them to set off my hair and dress as any daughter of Eve," wherewith she placed his offering, as he would have it, in her belt. He seemed to her always a kind of shorn Samson when afield from politics, and now, as she had often done, she drew him to speak of what he knew best. "I used to think you cared little about such things," he told her presently. "The average woman doesn't care greatly. If she had the ballot, she'd probably vote for the handsomest man--if the candidate was a man." "I'm afraid I should," owned Ruth. "For instance, I never could vote for a candidate with mutton-chop whiskers. And fancy having to decide between two women!" "Vote-buying would have a scope which staggers the imagination." The comment set her thoughts running on the accusations of corruption which were bandied from lip to lip during this campaign. "Are many votes really bought?" she asked. "Yes, many," Shelby answered frankly. "I shouldn't care to have you quote me, but I'll admit that I've sometimes bought them myself." She was dumfounded at his candor, and half regretted it. "Is it--is it quite necessary?" "I think it is--sometimes. And so it will be till the reformers show the practical politician a better system, or human nature changes its spots. Indiana was bought for Lincoln in '64. It would take an unpractical man, even an unpatriotic man, to deny that the crisis did not justify the step." "Every candidate is not a Lincoln." "Nor every year a '64. Timid people compound with their conscience by calling that Indiana affair a war measure. But we're talking of our own state, whose political name has justly or unjustly become a hissing among the nations. I don't deny there's some reason for it. We are big, with big opportunities for corruption, and the tradition of sharp practice is of long standing. We bribed, intimidated, and filibustered in swaddling clothes, and stole a governorship as early as 1791. The tricks of to-day have all gone stale with handling, for the patriots we honor were politicians too." "That is a novel point of view for me," Ruth admitted. "It's so easy to think the old time the best time." This was the pleader of the court-house rally, and she forgot the gaucheries and limitations of a moment since.