For the next week Constance diligently studied the newspapers for information in regard to the mooted measure. The entire community seemed suddenly aroused to the significance of the issue, and the daily press teemed with reading matter in relation thereto. The debate on the occasion of the second reading of the bill was the most protracted and earnest of the session. As Mr. Howard had intimated, it was not strictly a party measure; that is, it found advocates and opponents among the members of each of the two great political parties; only the so-called socialistic contingent gave it undivided support. But developments soon revealed that nearly all the conservative, eminently respectable members of the party to which Mr. Carleton Howard belonged were lining up in opposition to the bill on one plea or another. It was denounced by some as dangerous, by others, as unconstitutional; numerous amendments were offered in order to kill it by exaggerating its radical features or to render it innocuous. Constance imagined that she could discern the master hand of the banker in the fluctuations of sentiment, in some of the editorials, and in the solemn resolutions of certain commercial bodies. It was at the third reading of the bill that Gordon made his great speech--great from the point of view of the friends of the measure, because it set forth without undue excitement and superfluous oratory the essential soundness and justice of their cause. A packed house listened in absorbed silence to the forceful, concise presentation. On the morrow the rival merits of the controversy were still more eagerly bruited throughout the State. Constance could restrain herself no longer. Her lover was being stigmatized by the lips of many as an enemy of established society, yet she must not go to him and show her admiration and her faith. But she would write--just a line to let him know that she understood what he was attempting, and that she was on his side in the struggle for the common good against individualism and the pride of wealth. By way of answer there came next day merely a bunch of forget-me-nots addressed to her in his handwriting. She pressed the dainty yet humble flowers to her lips, then placed them in her breast. They seemed to express better than the pomp of roses his steadfast allegiance to her and to humanity.