“Certainly,” said Peter promptly, “But I must ask the same favor of you, as I am going down town at once.” Peter had the brutality to pass out of the front door instantly, leaving the reporter with a disappointed look on his face. “If he only would have said something?” groaned the reporter to himself. “Anything that could be spun into a column. He needn’t have told me what he didn’t care to tell, yet he could have helped me to pay my month’s rent as easily as could be.” As for Peter, he fell into a long stride, and his face nearly equalled his stride in length. After he reached his quarters he sat and smoked, with the same serious look. He did not look cross. He did not have the gloom in his face which had been so fixed an expression for the last month. But he looked as a man might look who knew he had but a few hours to live, yet to whom death had no terror. “I am giving up,” Peter thought, “everything that has been my true life till now. My profession, my friends, my chance to help others, my books, and my quiet. I shall be misunderstood, reviled and hated. Everything I do will be distorted for partisan purposes. Friends will misjudge. Enemies will become the more bitter. I give up fifty thousand dollars a year in order to become a slave, with toadies, trappers, lobbyists and favor-seekers as my daily quota of humanity. I even sacrifice the larger part of my power.” So ran Peter’s thoughts, and they were the thoughts of a man who had not worked seventeen years in politics for nothing. He saw alienation of friends, income, peace, and independence, and the only return a mere title, which to him meant a loss, rather than a gain of power. Yet this was one of the dozen prizes thought the best worth striving for in our politics. Is it a wonder that our government and office-holding is left to the foreign element? That the native American should prefer any other work, rather than run the gauntlet of public opinion and press, with loss of income and peace, that he may hold some difficult office for a brief term? But finally Peter rose. “Perhaps she’ll like it,” he said aloud, and presumably, since no woman is allowed a voice in American politics, he was thinking of Miss Columbia. Then he looked at some photographs, a scrap of ribbon, a gold coin (Peter clearly was becoming a money worshipper), three letters, a card, a small piece of blotting-paper, a handkerchief (which Leonore and Peter had spent nearly ten minutes in trying to find one day), a glove, and some dried rose-leaves and violets. Yet this was the man who had grappled an angry tiger but two hours before and had brought it to lick his hand. He went to bed very happy. CHAPTER XLIX. CLOUDS.