"Through an option or two I'm rather interested myself," he continued smoothly. "I'd like to see every good man indorse a good thing. I haven't been told what your opinion is." Getting no answer, he added: "Of course we expect to pull the thing off in this winter's session. If not, then the fight goes into your House. Between ourselves, just where do you stand?" "You don't need to be told that it's a gigantic job." Krantz's benevolent features expressed blandest regret. "Now isn't it a pity that misconception should be so widespread?" he exclaimed, apparently to the writhing ornaments of the ceiling. "Isn't it a pity? But it's so often true! Take that street railway bill of yours last winter: how that enlightened measure was denounced!" Shelby scowled. "We're talking of Washington." "They've a lot in common, Albany and Washington." "I don't want them to have for me." Krantz laughed. "How reform does drop its gentle influence round! Has the fusion movement in Tuscarora converted you?" "No," Shelby answered. "I've grown." Krantz looked bewildered, laughed a little, and asked point-blank, "Shall you come out against us?" "You'll know in Washington." "If elected," qualified the man. "Naturally." Krantz rang up the porter to ask if his berth were ready, rose, yawned, and shed a benevolent smile. "From things they're beginning to say about Tuscarora down at headquarters," he remarked impersonally, "I venture to predict that we'll know within twenty-four hours. Good night." The River and Harbor bogy wove the pattern of Shelby's troubled dreams. In a way, he had grown, as he liked to think, and by this touchstone he knew it best. Whatever his practice, his quickened ideals were loftier than of old, and across the future's broader field, should it be his to till, the man was honestly ambitious to trace a straighter furrow than his ploughshare had ever turned. But his past and the insistent present seemed to hamper every forward step. It was an open secret that the disciplining of the man he hoped to succeed had issued directly from his refusal to stand with his colleagues in this question, and Shelby in his heart approved his course. He did not anticipate that he should meet a like dilemma; the winter session of the old House would doubtless settle the matter, as Krantz had said; but Volney Sprague had harped upon his possible action so incessantly that he could easily see why the organization might wonder at his silence. Was the time for speech, then, so near as this creature warned?