became a finished product, would be a better citizen than his political rival. CHAPTER VI LENA HARPSTER The bell in the cupola of the First Church had just rung out the hour of midnight, and the slow, deep notes, which seemed to derive a certain solemnity from the graveyard below, were carried in broken echoes to the very suburbs of the city on the wings of a moist, intermittent wind. The storm of the previous night, which had lifted during the day, now seemed about to begin anew, and the air was full of a sense of unshed rain. Down in the street, where bits of waste paper and other small refuse spun around under the swaying electric lights, the huge cleaner, called "the devil waggon," was just beginning its nocturnal task. In front of the City Hall, lately such a scene of busy life, a solitary car stood ready to start upon its homeward trip, its two violet lamps winking in the wind like a pair of sleepy eyes. Only the all-night drug-store on the opposite corner kept up an appearance of wakefulness by means of a corona of milk-white lights that made a brilliant spot in the comparative obscurity of the long thoroughfare. Whatever poetical or imaginative suggestions might lie in this scene for others, it made no such appeal to Tom Emmet as he strode along, passing belated pedestrians in his course. He had just come from a protracted consultation with his political lieutenants, and deep in the maze of his own plans the twelve beats of the bell now reminded him that Lena Harpster must have been waiting for his coming a full hour by the gate where they had planned to meet. Even this thought could scarcely soften his mood as yet. Sure of the experience that awaited him, he was content to postpone it till the actual moment. Politics was a fact, and his love was a fact, and each was assigned its appropriate time. This eye for the actualities of the moment was characteristic of the man. A street to him was only a thoroughfare, in which there were certain things that concerned him personally, or through which he must pass to reach a definite destination. To Leigh, on the contrary, it was sometimes a comparative unreality, a vista suggesting thoughts of Thebes and Babylon and Rome, a symbol of life's pilgrimage, a path where multitudinous sounds blended into a universal chant of the voyager. It was perhaps this difference that constituted an element of attraction between the two men. The star-gazer admired the practical qualities that made for success in the world below his tower, and the politician paid an involuntary tribute to a spirituality above his own.