"Dot! Kids--the living-room, I'm in the living-room! Dot!" In a moment they were around him, and they were the Dot and the Mike and the Terry whose faces had been so familiar so long ago. "I must've--he--I must've been reading this final--look, Dot, my God look--" She saw the Page One streamer. "Then he was--he was trying, here, he was trying, Doug.... That was why. When I arrived, I had a pistol in my hand...." The headline read BLAIR BILL GOES TO HOUSE TOMORROW. And in the three-column drop beneath it: _Unanimous Passage Seen--Senate Reported Favorable--President Says He'll Sign Immediately--Draft Of 13's Would Begin Nov. 15--Soviet Terms Measure 'Fantastic.'_ "Doug--" "He's begun it all right. How, I don't know, unless--And beneath the centerfold he read CLERGY LAUDS BLAIR BILL AT PARLEY HERE. "Had them falling for it, had 'em mainlined all the way!" Doug said. And then he was going swiftly toward the den, almost at a run. He pulled a battered chair up to the big desk, lifted his telephone from its cradle almost in a single motion. Quietly, Dot shut the door behind him. It would be a long time, she knew, before it would open again. CHAPTER XXII The night was quiet, and the air was warm and still. The man and the woman walked close together, and with slow, unmeasured steps, as though the great, slumbering city was a garden, and they were exploring it for the first time. They did not speak, for their eyes were wide, engrossed simply in seeing. A soldier passed them, then a man who might have been a store-clerk, a student, a salesman, a clergyman, a scientist. A young couple approached from the opposite direction, saying quiet things to each other, perhaps deciding intimate, very important plans for some near future time. They passed an all-night drug store, its gaudy light washing the sidewalk to the curb, limning the wide racks of newspapers and magazines which told their stories in a dozen languages, on a thousand themes. The streets were wide and empty, but they were not lonely, for in them were the silent echoes of the struggles and victories, big and small, that had been fought, won and lost in them in a day just dying, just to be born again in a few short hours. The man and woman walked for a long time. And Douglas Blair thought of what would not happen tomorrow. Not tomorrow or, perhaps with great care and the forgiveness of the Almighty, not even the day after that.