"It's useless to talk, Morris," she said, firmly. "I am going. I'd as well tell you I've been slipping into the gallery of the Opera House the past six months. I've tried to keep away, but I had to go. I am going to-day. I've heard him talk and dream and plan so much of this, it seems my own." "Well, I'm going with you. You shall not enter that den of Anarchists alone again." She hesitated. "You may go if you'll agree to sit behind a pillar in the gallery where we will not be seen." When they were seated he whispered to Ruth: "But for you, I wouldn't be caught dead in this place. I'll soon be the Governor, and it will be my duty to see that some of these gentlemen are carefully packed in quicklime at Sing Sing." She started suddenly, her brow clouded, and she placed a trembling hand on his arm. "Hush, Morris." "It'll be so, mark my word." "Hush!" she repeated, with such a shudder of pain he hastened to whisper. "I beg your pardon, Ruth. You know I was joking." Gordon rose and gazed for a moment over the sea of faces. His quick sympathies and brilliant imagination were stirred to their depths. When the beautifully modulated voice first filled the room, Ruth felt with quick sympathy, beneath the tremor of his tones, the storm of suppressed feeling. Her eyes filled, and she bent forward, following him breathlessly. He held the crowd spellbound. Even the foreign Socialists, unable to understand a word of English, hung on every gesture, held by the magnetism of his powerful personality. As he reached an impassioned climax, Ruth was startled to hear a note of suppressed laughter from a woman sitting in the same row behind the next pillar. She looked quickly, and saw Overman's massive head cocked to one side, his face an immovable mask, and his single gleaming eye fixed on Gordon, with Kate beside him. Overman stayed to dinner and congratulated his friend on his effort. "Frank, you surpassed yourself," he said. "You made the grandest defense of an indefensible absurdity I ever heard." "H'm, that's saying a good deal for you." Overman pulled his moustache thoughtfully. "But I couldn't help wishing I were an orator to jaw back at you. A preacher has such an easy thing, with no back talk except the sonorous echo of his own voice." "Think you could have talked back to-day?" There was a moment's silence. Overman leaned back and locked his hands behind his massive neck. "If you hit a man with a brick, he may hurt you. Drop a millstone on him, he'll not even reply. If I could have gotten at you to-day, your wife would have lost her insurance policy, because there wouldn't have been anything to identify." "Nothing like a good opinion of oneself," Gordon replied, good-naturedly. Overman nodded.