"Same way you don't stoop to buy the purchasable? Lord! If the Tuscarora floaters only knew their Santa Claus!" But Bowers merely coughed. Tickled with his joke at the expense of his associate whose handling of the State Committee's saving aid had been masterly, Shelby went to his evening meal in a humor which even a second note from Mrs. Hilliard could not damp. In scent, brevity, and chirography it was the counterpart of the first, telling him that the nameless writer was wretched, and begging him to come to her. The appeal found him in a softened mood. Viewed at the close of an irksome day, Mrs. Hilliard's society had attractions which his hypercritical mind of the morning hours slighted; and while her message in itself left his withers unwrung, he concluded that it was perhaps as well to break gently with "poor Cora" now, as later, when possibly greater growth and broader horizons might create barriers yet more awkward. Under a show of letter-writing, accordingly, he lingered in the hotel office till he was certain that Joe Hilliard had joined his boon companions of the billiard room, when he let himself quietly out of doors and made his way to the quarry owner's home. "I was afraid you might come, and then that you mightn't," the woman whispered, in the obscurity of the hall. "Joe had a headache, and said at first that he wouldn't go out to-night; but he went." "Yes; I know. Servants out?" "Oh, yes." "And Milicent?" he pursued, scorning hypocrisy. "I let her go away for the night. The poor child needed a change." As they left the hall he discovered that she was in evening dress--the black gown glittering with jet beads and bugles which she had introduced at the first autumn meeting of the Culture Club. He held her hand high, and turned her slowly round after the manner of the dance. "Did you do that for me?" he asked, his face lighting. She nodded. "I wore it the night of your nomination, and I put it on to-night to bring you luck at the polls. Was it silly of me?" "Not if somebody else doesn't see." "Joe'll not see. I shall have gone to my room before he comes. I'll not keep you long. It's enough that you've proved you cared to come. It's a crumb of comfort in my wretchedness." "You know I've been on the jump," he returned, adding dryly, "You don't look as wretched as your note led me to expect." "You can't know." "Not till I'm told." "The scene there's been, I mean." "Scene? What scene?" "With Joe--about you--New York--everything." "There wasn't need for a word. Nobody's blabbed. I saw to that. I went to Sprague in New York." "I told Joe," she confessed. "You didn't come that morning--and I was frightened. I thought if stories were to get to him, I'd best be the one to tell them. So I left at once." "If you had only waited." "If you had only got word to me." They fell into explanation of their several movements, from which Shelby, white-faced, suddenly cut loose, saying:--