"Yes. I know what the firm means to you, but I can’t do what you ask. You want me to give up what I think is right for the sake of saving your firm. I can’t do it." "It’s your firm, too, Huber." "Then I’ve got a right to hurt it." "I’m not asking you to do anything wrong; I’m only asking you to wait." "That’s just what I can’t do," said Luke. Forbes would hear no more. He twitched with a spasm of weak rage. His voice rang high. "You’re a fool!" he cried. "You talk as if I were trying to compound a felony with you. What am I asking? I’m only asking you to hold off for this campaign. I’m only asking you to stand by the man that took you into his business—my Business, the one that my grandfather founded and my father handed down to me. Haven’t _I_ stood by _you_? Didn’t I trust you? I’ve kept out of all these big combinations, but I know how they work—nobody can help knowing these days—and when I took you in, how was I to be sure you weren’t a dummy representing somebody else, and so on, higher and higher up, till the trail ended with just these same men? But no, I trusted you. I trusted you, and now—— You’ve no right to humiliate me! You’ve no right to wreck my Business! Do you know what you’re doing? You’re making a beggar out of my daughter—out of the girl you told me last night you wanted to be your wife!" Luke had been expecting this. The muscles about his mouth tightened, but all that he said was: "I suppose you have spoken to her?" "Yes, I have. Of course I have!" cried Forbes. "And what does she say?" Forbes tried to take Luke’s hand. "Why do you act this way?" he pleaded. "Why can’t you wait? They haven’t nominated you yet. Withdraw your name. That won’t hurt the League, and it will only make you all the stronger for the next time; and by the next time we’ll be ready to meet all opposition. This time you can’t be elected even if you are nominated. Why do you want to jump into the fire?" "What," insisted Luke, "does Betty say?" She was at the door. She came in as he asked the question. She looked from her lover to her father, and then she ran to her father and put her head on his shoulder. §6. Luke took a short breath. He wanted to leave them. He felt that he could not face much more. He wondered what Forbes had said to her and how much she had heard of what Forbes and he were saying. "Betty!" said her father. He patted her head. Luke thought that the caressing hand looked old. "Betty!" She spoke with her face hidden: "Oh, Luke, you wouldn’t hurt father?" "It isn’t that, Betty." Luke was angry. The girl was behaving as he thought that a girl placed as she was ought to behave, and he loved her no less for that, but he was angry at her father’s weakness in putting her in such a position, "It isn’t that, Betty, I’ve got to do it. You don’t understand these things. You can’t understand them." "She knows that _I_ understand them," Forbes interposed.